Creating posts within Parents Square allows you to communicate pertinent information with students' families. Once you are logged into your ParentSquare account, you'll wanna go to the left hand side navigation menu and select posts. Then you'll select the pencil icon that says new posts. This rich content editor box will display. This is where you can type in all your information, add images, add tables, even add video if you wanted to, your post in the two box. When you select, put your cursor in that box, you'll see all of your classes as they're scheduled from Aspen. You can select one class or multiple classes to send to the post. Two. Once a class is selected, you'll wanna go ahead and put your subject line here. 

I'm gonna make a post for an upcoming Valentine's Day party. So that's gonna be my subject line. And then here is where I'm gonna type in the information that I want parents to see. So I wanna put in my classes date for the party. And then I'm also gonna have parents donate supplies for the party if they're able to, and even volunteer if they'd like to come. Help out with passing out Valentine's and different crafts that we'll be doing that morning. I also wanna add an image. When you add an image to a post, it increases the likelihood that families are going to look at your post and engage with it. So if I select this photo icon right over here, I can either drop an image or I can go ahead and open up my desktop and have an image added that I've already saved, which is what I'm going to do. Okay. I can also resize this image with my handles over here. 

Once I'm happy with the way that it is, I can go in here and also edit the text. I can change the font size of it and the color of it and I can make it just a little bit easier to read and just so that it grabs people's attention just a little bit more. Once I'm happy with that and I've used all the features I want, I can go ahead and add some additional features to this post. 

So one of the features that I'm gonna add is the ability to donate items and to volunteer for my class party. So over here on the left hand side are post add-ons. These are additional features that make your post a little bit more engaging and interactive. I am going to select the ask for items, and here I can go ahead and have the items that I need for my party listed. I can also say how many of those I will need. And then once I am done creating my list here, parents will have the opportunity to sign up for those items. 

I can also request volunteers and so I might need someone to help with graphs. I can add that here. I can select the time that I want them to come and help, and then I can add how many volunteers I would need for that timeframe. Once that information is in there, parents will also have the ability to sign up to volunteer and the would still need to have volunteer forms on file at the school. This is just a helpful, helpful way for your scheduling purposes. S

o I've got this post almost about ready to go. I wanna look over here before I send it to who I am sending this to. I wanna send this just to parents, not to the teachers at my school. So I'm gonna select parents. If you are a high school teacher, you have student square, so you could send this to your students as well if this is something that you want students and parents to see. Then over here to the right hand side, I see who my message is going to. I can see that 733 families have this set to instant. They're gonna get my post right away, but 656 have it set to digest. They're gonna get it later that evening as one streamed digest email. I can post this right now. I can preview it or I can schedule this post to go out later, which is helpful if you're working on something after school. But don't want it to go out till the next day. I can also save this draft and come back to it later and finish it as well. 

Once that's good to go, I can go ahead and post this. Families will then see it, they can sign up for it. I will get helpful information about who's signed up for items. It will also send them reminder emails if they've signed up to volunteer or to donate an item so that they don't forget to bring that into your class. So that's just a little bit about creating posts to get you started.