Carol Grams

We at Westwood Elementary wanted to do some sort of outreach into the community that all students could participate in, regardless of age. Carol Grams are another type of “singing gram.” This initiative is a way for parents of students, teachers, and community members to donate money to support our growing music program of 400+ students while bringing holiday cheer to family, friends, community members, and people all around the country. People can request specific classes or groups of students to call someone who can use some cheering up and sing them a holiday song.

The objectives of the initiative were to brighten the lives of people in our community, teach students the power of their voices and the joy it can bring, while bringing in a little bit of money for the music program.

Many young kids do not realize the joy that singing can bring to others and the power they have with their body’s natural instrument. The goal was to help them realize the impact they can have, even at a young age, by singing a holiday song to someone who could use it! When students would make the phone calls and sing, they were able to hear the excitement and happiness from the person receiving the call, giving them immediate feedback and helping them to see the difference they made.

Students are the focus of everything we do! The project ultimately is for their benefit – to teach them important lessons and to raise funds that go toward their music education. Parents are the focus for our advertisements, since they are the ones who typically request the carol grams. Community members are the focus of the phone calls because they are the people we are trying to reach with our music.

Each year, the timeline is as follows:

Summer – Filling out a fundraising form for administration approval

Fall – Creating advertisements and sign-up forms for the initiative

Late October/Early November – Fliers are sent home and advertisements are put in music programs

Late October-Early December – people send in donations and request carol grams. This can be done via Google Form, or fill out a paper form and send it to school with their child.

November – Decide what songs will be taught and prepare lessons accordingly. Because of our school demographic, the students are taught Christmas and secular winter songs for carol grams, but they can easily be changed depending on what winter holidays your students celebrate. We pick songs for carol grams based on what the students are already learning in class, but if additional songs are needed, we pull from common songs heard around the holidays.

November/Early December – Teach Students songs to be sung over the phone, process incoming money/donations, create a list of calls to be made when carol grams start. When making the list of calls to be made, the teacher must be sure to plan to set aside at least 2-3 minutes of class time per phone call so that all requests can be fulfilled.

December – students and music teacher make phone calls during their scheduled music class time before leaving for winter break

The planning and execution of the advocacy initiative is done by the music teacher. They create the advertisements and sign-up forms, handle the money being turned in, teach the songs to the students, and make the carol gram calls during scheduled music class times. Depending on the number of requests for a class to sing, it can take anywhere from 10-45 minutes. The planning portion only requires a few hours of work from the organizer. Processing money and scheduling when the calls will take place take a few additional hours. Overall, it requires the organizer approximately 4 hours of work in addition to the time spent teaching students and making the calls. We have experienced that most classes will do anywhere between 2 and 5 phone calls on average, so plan to spend at least half of one class period making calls.

The calls themselves only take a few minutes. The teacher answers the phone and says “Happy Holidays! The students at _____ school have a song for you!” followed by a 30-60 second song. The students then say “goodbye!” or “happy holidays” or “merry christmas” and that is the end of the call.

Google Forms was the most important tool to help with the initiative. Parents or anyone who wanted to sign up for a carol gram could fill out a Google form with their information, the info of the person to be called, what class they wanted to sing, etc.

Canva is a great tool for making advertisements, creating QR codes that people can scan to sign up, etc. Canva is a frequently used tool for fundraising advertisements.

Google Voice is important for making the actual calls to families. This way, they can be made from a cell phone, without the person’s actual phone number being shared in the process.

We used paper flyers, advertisements in music programs, email communication to parents(2-3 emails), as well as our school messaging system(Class Dojo) to get the word out to parents about the initiative. All of these methods allow us to reach more parents and impact the wider community.

There is no cost to running this initiative. This project usually brings in around $100 or more. The forms are left open-ended on purpose. Some parents will donate just a few dollars, while others will donate around $20 for one or two phone calls. It is recommended that a donation of $1-2 be made per phone call requested. If a donation is not received, we still try to make a phone call, and time has always allowed us to do so.

In the initial year of doing carol grams, we used a school phone. In the event that someone doesn’t answer the phone, we leave them a voicemail. Many times, after they listen to the message, they want to call back or text to express their gratitude. When they redial, it sends them to our school office, not to the music room, which would back up the office. I started using Google Voice, so that return calls and text messages could be received by my phone, without my personal number having to become public.

The initiative was effective based on the reactions of the students and how they received that immediate feedback of hearing the joy expressed by the person on the other end of the phone. We have also received many texts, emails, and voicemails from the people receiving the carol gram about how much they enjoyed the call and how it brightened their day!

It showed the students of our school how much of an impact their voice can have and brought joy to friends and families all around the community and the country as a whole! It also brought in a little bit of money for us to use toward programs and classroom supplies since our Music program is not given a budget.

Some years it can be a very small project, and other years it can become something huge! Make sure to give yourself enough class time to meet the demands of your community! Even when not a lot of money is made, it is still worth the effort because of the impact it has on the students.