Parents of Cadets

[c/LTCOLorbust]

 Hello all, I'm a leadership officer at my SQ and the DC and I are looking at starting some kind of program to keep the parents in our SQ more informed. Due to our SQ having so many young cadets, we are finding that more the half the cadets in our SQ don't drive them self or plan their own week or months themselfs.

We are wanting to do a newsletter and quarterly parents meeting.

If anyone has a program that your SQ uses or has used, I would like to see how other SQs have done things.

Both the DC and I don't have the time to re-invent the wheel

Thanks

[Pylon]

Actually, when I had a more robust CP staff, we did parent-staff conferences (but not all on the same night).  We'd ask the parent(s) of one cadet to come about 30 to 45 minutes before the end of our meeting and sit down with them.  We'd share with them their child's progress in the program, where they can go from there and also gave them a chance to ask us questions and find out information.

I found them extremely helpful.  I learned new things about some of the cadets in our squadron and got a much better sense of how to deal with certain cadets.  The parents also seemed to gain a much clearer picture of what it is their son or daughter does every Wednesday night, and what they should expect their child to be doing between meetings.

Even if you explain the expectations to the parents when they first join (cadet should be prepping and caring for their uniform, studying for their next achievement tests, exercising, etc.) it's a good reminder to have once or twice a year.  It was easy to just do one parent per week, and slowly work our way through the active cadets; i imagine this approach wouldn't work in a very large squadron in the same way.

With my leadership officer in Afghanistan, my MLO off to grad school, my activities and personnel officers out for maternity leave and my asst. LO having moved out of state I haven't done any of these recently.   

[majdomke]

I started a Yahoo Group for our cadets. I automatically added the parents email account so I know they get all the updated. Once the group has been created, you just need to post calendar items, files, links and then create discussions. I find about 50-60% read it and keep up with it. In these modern times, this is the next best thing to calling each one of them every time something new happens. A great place to put photos too. Personally, our group is closed to the public to protect privacy. This is because we have contact info and chain of command posted.

[Pylon]

I started a Yahoo Group for our cadets. I automatically added the parents email account so I know they get all the updated. Once the group has been created, you just need to post calendar items, files, links and then create discussions. I find about 50-60% read it and keep up with it. In these modern times, this is the next best thing to calling each one of them every time something new happens. A great place to put photos too. Personally, our group is closed to the public to protect privacy. This is because we have contact info and chain of command posted.

We do something slightly similar, as far as getting out the word. 

Set-up email redirects for

cadets@ourdomain.com redirects to all of our cadet members
officers@ourdomain.com redirects to all of our senior members
members@ourdomain.com redirects to all members, cadet & senior
parents@ourdomain.com redirects to parents

Then we can email out activities announcements, deadline reminders, meeting information, etc. in a timely and targeted fashion.  Our webmaster inputs the email's and maintains is manually, which is a downside.  The upside is that it requires no action on the end-users part... I don't have to wait for parents or cadets or seniors to sign-up for it.  They just get emails when appropriate.  I don't expect parents or members to randomly think "Hey, I should log-on to the squadron site and check the calendar for updates" -- the email is a more forward approach, IMO.

[majdomke]

I automatically add people to the group, they need to do nothing and start receiving messages immediately. I also add reminders to all calendar items, except regular meetings.

[DC]

We have a squadron Yahoo Group that we encourage all cadets and parents to join, and we ensure that the cadets know about upcoming events every week, and suggest that they tell their parents...

Works for us.

It also helps, a lot of our parents are Cadet Sponsors...

[Hill CAP]

Here in Florida Wing Group 8 we have a Group wide yahoo group and in my former Sq if you are a cadet and under 18 we require you put your parents email as your contact instead of your email and we send weekly emails.

Still doesn't always work