A new year of school has started…. a new set of kiddos, a new set of routines and expectations, a new set of parents, and a new set of headaches.  Each school year for teachers starts off with a bang.  Straight from in-service, we are thrown into the fire with kids, admin requirements, parent nights and more. There is so much to do in those first weeks it is insane.  Or at least it feels like that is where you are headed!

After you make it through, you get to take a breath, but not a big one… because you are faced with all of those signup sheets you had parents fill out at parent night.  Like when they could come to conferences, where and when would they like to volunteer, and forget about all of the updates that you need to send out.  By the end of September, you start asking your friends- “Exactly why did I choose this path again??”

At my school, before we adopted Bloomz, this was me.  I have parent volunteers coming in to help every day of the week.  I managed all of their schedules, and was checking emails late into the night and early in the morning making sure they didn’t cancel.  And don’t even get me started with parent teacher conferences- we would send out sign ups in waves, making sure families with siblings would have priority, etc.  They would send in their top 3 times, and then it was up to me to Rubik’s cube them into a schedule that worked for everyone.  So on top of my 20 kids I am responsible for during the day- I was also responsible for 40 adult schedules, and making sure everyone got a slot that would work. And why am I not fleeing from this chaos and on a beach in Mexico?  Because it all changed….

I cannot begin to describe how Bloomz has given me back my sanity and time.  Just by using the volunteer and conference schedulers, I have saved over 10 hours of my evenings easily.  Here’s how.

Volunteer Sign Ups

• I was able to hand this off to my room parent, and give her the parameters for what I wanted and when, and she easily plugged it into the class calendar
• You can set up reoccurring volunteer positions, singly, weekly, bi-weekly or monthly so you only have to enter in the information once
• Busy parents that can’t commit to a set time can look last minute if they find themselves free and see if there is a spot available for that day
• Bloomz will notify the teacher if someone does sign up
• You can easily see who is coming in when from your Bloomz home screen
• You will have more parents show up and volunteer when you give them a simple way to sign up without feeling pressure at a parent night

 Parent Teacher Conferences

• This is the best feature on Bloomz hands down.  And that says a lot because they are all amazing…
• Instead of taking hours of time to manage sign ups, it takes less than 5 minutes to follow the prompts and send a sign up request to your parents
• Parents can easily manage their own schedules if something comes up and they need to reschedule.  Instead of having to go through you, they just log on, see what is available, and take a space that works for them
• They have the ability to message other parents if they need to switch times
• You can print out a list for conference day so you can have your list handy

And- you can set up reminder for both of these calendar entries so that parents don’t forget and all will actually show up!

So- if you are trying to decide whether Bloomz is for you- I can honestly say it is.  Don’t walk- run to the website and get an account.  There is a demo class loaded on everyone’s page so that you can play with both these features and more.  If you are already using Bloomz- these are your features you can’t live without.  I can’t stress enough how much time you will have again.  I mean look at me- I am actually writing a blog!

Try scheduling volunteer request or parent-teacher conferences now!