Sign-ups
Contacting principals
Reaching out to principals is the first step to implementing Cat Tales in schools. Ideally, reaching out to principals can lead to setting up a time and date to present Cat Tales to teachers so that they have the opportunity to sign-up for the program. To do this it is best to explain the concept of Cat Tales to principals and present to teachers at a staff meeting or similar event.
The best way to contact principals is through their school email, which can be found online on the Monroe School District website. Here is a sample email that could be used to set up a presentation with teachers about Cat Tales:
Hello Mr./Mrs./Ms. ________,
I'm reaching out to you to share information about the Cat Tales book program! This program was developed after meetings and conversations with Sue Skillen and Dr. Smith as a means of getting free books into the hands of Monroe students through teachers and classrooms. It is a subscription-type service where teachers can sign up to have a box of books delivered to their classroom periodically. The free books are provided by the Monroe Public School Foundation and are meant for teachers and students to keep!
I would like to present this program to your teachers. I am available at... ! My goal is to increase literacy of Monroe Students through access to books in the classroom.
Thank you so much for your help! I look forward to hearing from you soon.
Presentation at schools
After scheduling a date and time, it's important to focus on the information that will be shared with teachers to motivate them to sign up for Cat Tales. It is important to stress that the Cat Tales program is completely free and based off of donations. Reception has been overwhelmingly positive and so far there has been an average of 10 teacher sign ups per meeting. Here is a sample of message to present to teachers.
IMG_3635.MOV"Hi, my name is ________ and I'm representing the Cat Tales Book program. Cat Tales was created by Margaret Seaney as a Girl Scout Gold Award project. This project was inspired by the resources of the Monroe Public Schools Foundation's Book Room in the hope of bringing those resources straight to teachers. Cat Tales is designed to deliver a box of books to teacher's classrooms on a regular basis, like a subscription service. This program is free as all books are supplied by donations to the Book Room. To sign up for this program, you can use a sign up sheet to indicate what type of books would suit your classroom best."
Sign-up forms
The purpose of these sign up forms is to collect information about the teachers that sign up for Cat Tales in order to create a book box for their classroom. Information about the name and school will help the book box find it's proper destination, and grade/topic can help Cat Tales volunteers choose books that will accommodate the needs for that classroom. The specific kinds of books match the general topics that the Book Room is organized by, so it is easy for volunteers to pull certain kinds of books to fulfill certain subscriptions.
Sign up via Google form here:
Cat Tales Teacher Subscription Form.pdf