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www.insideHALTON.com | OAKVILLE BEAVER | Thursday, September 10, 2015 | 28 Fall Registration Parenteering: Help out at school without burning out By Malia Jacobson When Kristina Loper's oldest daughter started kindergarten, the mom of two wasted no time signing up for the school's parent council. "When the parents are involved at school, it helps create a stronger community, and it benefits the kids," she says. She's right -- according to the nonprofit research center Child Trends, parent involvement in school is linked to better grades and SMALL SIZE COMPUTER PROGRAMMING CLASSES RESULT IN MORE LEARNING! At Real Programming 4 KidsTM 15th Oakville Saturday and evenings weekly program, your child can learn University level Game Programming while still a kid! We teach 7 to 17 year-olds REAL PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES including; Visual Basic, Java, C#, C++ and Unity. These are the same tools the pros use! There are never more than 4 students per instructor and there is no minimum class size. This results in more learning as students receive more individualized instruction. RP4K is using Java to teach an advanced Minecraft Mod course! Our students are now using C# to program an Endless Runner game via the popular game engine - Unity! Our elite students are learning how to program an RPG game engine, using C++. No Programming experience required to begin! Call Real Programming 4 KidsTM today to schedule a no obligation 416-469-9676 FREE TRIAL CLASS www.realprogramming.com fewer behaviour problems in students, particularly for those in elementary school. Parent involvement also boosts teachers' job satisfaction. And parent involvement at schools is on the rise: Parent participation in school events increased nearly 10 per cent between 1999 and 2012. But there's a downside: Parent volunteering can quickly snowball from a few hours here and there to an avalanche of emails, committee meetings and late nights sewing 24 bluebird costumes for the spring carnival. Some volunteers, like Loper -- who served two years as president of school council and logged hundreds of hours at the school -- get buried, and burned out. Happily, it's possible to find balance as a volunteer, whether you have hundreds of hours to give or just a few minutes. Here's how. Boundary map: School volunteer duties have a way of ballooning, Loper says, so it's essential to set boundaries, especially for officers, room parents and others in time-intensive volunteer roles. She learned the hard way: "I saw all these needs at the school and I tried to fill them all. I definitely got burned out." At the peak of her school volunteering, Loper recalls, she would whisk her kids past the school's playground after school instead of stopping to let them play, because the minute she set foot on the playground she was flooded with parent questions about meetings, events and other school business -- the same types of questions she fielded night and day via email, text and phone. Burnout buster: Set limits on your time and energy -- because nobody else will do it for you. Loper got a handle on her burgeoning volunteer load by designating two days per week as "off" days for school volunteering: no school-volunteer-related emails, activities or phone calls on those days. Rivka Caroline, a time-management expert, mom of seven and author of From Frazzled to Focused: The Ultimate Guide for Moms (and Dads) Who Want to Reclaim Their Time, Their Sanity and Their Lives, recommends sticking to a set number of monthly "pro bono" hours per month. Continued on page 29 We're here for her ambitions. Schedule your tour of our beautiful 10-acre campus and see how inspiring education can be. Our state-of-the-art campus is specifically designed to give your daughter the exceptional education she deserves. At St. Mildred's ­ Lightbourn School, we believe all girls are destined for greatness. We simply give them what they need to reach their potential. Help your daughter Rise & Shine. Book your tour today by calling 905.845.5830 ext. 814 or by visiting www.smls.on.ca. Now accepting applications for Preschool to Grade 12.