Meet the Teacher: Setting the Tone for a Positive School Year ~ Ep. 97

Episode Summary

Today we’re talking about how to set up a meaningful before-school Meet the Teacher event. Not a curriculum night or open house, but that special time when families and students come in before the first day to explore the classroom, ease nerves, and kick off the year with calm and connection.

If you’re planning your Meet the Teacher visit or want to make yours run more smoothly, this episode is full of practical tips and real-talk encouragement. Plus, you can grab my exact checklist (and all my back-to-school forms) in the Kindergarten Pack linked below.

In this episode I share:

• What to include (and not include) at your visit
• Why sending info ahead of time saves your sanity
• My go-to checklist that keeps kids and parents engaged
• The picture book I always read to end on a sweet, supportive note

Resources:

• Kindergarten Back to School Activities | First 2 Weeks Kindergarten Lesson Plans
• First Month of Kindergarten Success Kit | Back to School Activities Mega Bundle
• A New Kind of Curriculum Night

First Month of Kindergarten Success Kit

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Connect with Zeba:

• Instagram – @kindergartencafe
• Facebook – @kindergartencafe
• Website – www.kindergartencafe.org
• Tik Tok – @kindergartencafe

Read the Transcript

[0:00] Hey, teacher friends, it’s Zeba from Kindergarten Cafe, and I’m talking today about meet the teacher, how to do a meet the teacher event, how to set the tone for a positive school year, specifically like a before school visit, like how to set that up. So let’s dive in.

[0:21] You’re listening to the Kindergarten Cafe podcast, where kindergarten teachers come to learn classroom-tested tips and tricks and teaching ideas they can use in their classroom right away. I’m Zeba, creator and founder of Kindergarten Cafe, and I help kindergarten teachers with everything they need from arrival to dismissal in order to save time, work smarter, not harder, and support students with engaging and purposeful lessons. I’m here to cheer you on through your successes and breakthroughs, and offer support and resources so you never have to feel stuck or alone. Ready to start saving time and reducing your stress all while using effective and purposeful lessons that students love? Let’s get started.

[1:13] So like I said, we’re going to be talking today about how to set up a meaningful before school visit for families and students. I’m not talking about this as like a curriculum night or a night with just parents to get to know the expectations, but rather a day before school when kids get to come explore the classroom and meet each other, that kind of thing. If you do want support for more of a curriculum night, I love to do stations where parents float around and find different things to do and get to know the materials themselves without you standing up giving a very long presentation. And I have a whole blog post that outlines how I do that that I will put in the show notes. So if that’s what you’re wanting support with, don’t worry, I’ve got you. But today is more about that before school visit with students. So the whole point of having a before school visit, which if you have the option to do, I definitely recommend, because the whole point of this visit is to set the tone for the year, give families and students a chance to visit the classroom, because that will.

[2:16] Really reduce a lot of anxieties and stress. It will really help with the nerves. It will help with the transition. It’ll help with the separation on the first day of school. So it’s really helpful when you can, if you’re able to, give students a chance to visit the classroom before school starts. The goal is to get kids familiar with the space and introduce themselves to some friends so that they feel comfortable, like making friends, and feel comfortable in their new space, like knowing where the important things are, that kind of thing. Because that is our purpose, we don’t want families just to wander around meaningless.

[2:56] Purposeless, and talking your ear off the whole time because it will feel so overwhelming if everyone’s trying to talk to you at the same time and asking a million questions.

[3:05] And you want to keep families engaged. So how do we do that? First, having information sent out before the visit day is critical. I mentioned this in my episode on three things to do before this first day of kindergarten the more information you can give out the better because you will help ease a lot of parent parental anxieties and parental questions and then they won’t come up to you on the visit day with a million questions so that’s important i remember one year they started offering like breakfast for free or like i don’t know they’ve always had breakfast as an option but they sent i was so annoyed that my assistant principal sent out an email to families like right before the visit day about how to order breakfast or something about breakfast. And I hadn’t really put anything about breakfast in my communication because, I don’t know, it wasn’t really something I ever had questions about or knew much about or it changed recently. I don’t really remember. But because that email got sent out, I then had a million parents, and I mean a million, coming up to me during the visit day to ask questions about breakfast. And that has never happened before or after. It was literally because they got some communication with some vague information about breakfast, and then that prompted a million questions. So the more information you can give, like that email that was sent out about breakfast did not have enough information. The more information you can give, the better. It’s not over communicating.

[4:32] It’s helpful. And if parents don’t need the information, They won’t read it or they’ll skim it and then they’ll probably still ask you questions, but it will save you so many questions and so much time if you can send out information beforehand that will take care of a lot of their questions. Questions and anxieties that they’re going to have before the first day of kindergarten. When families get there to the visit day, it will be really good to have a checklist to give them, some things to find in the classroom. The things on the checklist should be the things that you want students to know before the first day of kindergarten and the things that parents and families are going to want to see before the first day of kindergarten. First things first, they’re going to want to see their name tag, maybe even put it on so that other parents and families and kids can get to know who the other kids are. But you also want to help them find their name tag on their table or on their locker or cubby or whatever it is. So have them find their names on all those places.

[5:32] You definitely want to help them find where they’re going to be putting their backpack and their lunchbox and all of that. We have lockers, maybe you have cubbies, whatever it is. You want them to know where that space is before the first day of school. You want them to know where the bathroom is and the sink or the water fountain. And then you want to help them get to know friends. So on the checklist I literally say introduce yourself to another friend in the class that encourages students to meet each other and some families and some students wouldn’t take that initiative if it wasn’t on the checklist. I also if there’s other staff that will be in the room like my kindergarten assistant I have that on the checklist to meet them. I actually ask her to take a picture of the kids because it helps me to I keep track of who came for the visit day, but it’s also a good way for her to meet them too. And then I have activities on the tables, which gives the kids a chance to…

[6:24] Unwind a little bit and play. It gets me a chance to see how kids are interacting or like what interests they have, what they’re choosing for the activities, and gives them a chance to meet other kids, right? So it also helps them feel just like less worried about the first day of kindergarten, like, hey, these toys are in the room. I’m going to have fun here. So they aren’t so worried for that first day. And I always end with a story because I like to have a clear end point. And I think it’s nice for the kids and the families to see the story and to kind of end with that together. And I always choose dad’s first day because it’s all about a first day of kindergarten.

[7:12] And actually, I don’t know if it’s specifically kindergarten, but it’s a kid’s first day of school and he’s going to school and dad is so nervous for him to go to school and he’s nervous to leave him at the door and dad is worried about it and dad is upset and the kid is fine the kid is having fun and at the end of the day dad realizes like okay he’s fine and he’s having fun at the end of school they go and get ice cream and i love it because the as you’re reading the book it’s not really clear it’s about the dad’s feelings you think it’s about like the kid’s first day. And then you realize that the dad is the one worried. And so at the end, I can close the book and be like, parents, I know you’re going to be worried for your kid to go to kindergarten. And you have a lot of feelings, but it’s okay. We’ve got them. And they’re going to have fun, just like this kid on his first day.

[7:59] So parents really, really like that. Trust me, it’s a crowd pleaser. So that’s my Meet the Teacher event. It is honestly half an hour. That’s it. Maybe 45 minutes. That’s it. The kids come in. They get to see the key parts of the classroom. They get to see their name and know that they are welcome. They get to play a little bit and feel excited to come to kindergarten. Having this time really helps to ease the nerves of the kids and the parents so I definitely.

[8:29] Recommend if you can doing one if you want the checklist that I use and other notices and letters and stuff that I send to families and all of that stuff all that is included in my back to school kindergarten pack so you can actually get the checklist that I use for the meet the teacher day. Like I said, if you are looking for more support with curriculum night and an opportunity to, you know, when parents come in alone to get to know what the kids will be learning in the year, I have a blog post where I explain how I use stations to help with that, to help it so that you’re not just standing up and giving a lecture at the parents for like half an hour.

[9:08] I did not enjoy that. So I tried a different way. So you can find that in the show notes and stay tuned for next week’s episode, we’re going to talk about how I introduce writing, Writer’s Workshop. Please, please consider leaving a review. We’re almost at 100 episodes, and I would love to have some more reviews between now and then to celebrate 100 episodes. It would mean so much to me. Thanks so much for listening.

[9:39] Thanks so much for listening to the Kindergarten Cafe podcast. Be sure to check out the show notes for more information and resources, or just head straight to kindergartencafe.org for all the goodies. If you liked this episode, the best ways to show your support are to subscribe, leave a review, or send it to a friend. I’ll be back next week with even more kindergarten tips. See you then.