Key to Caring Issue 2-FINAL

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Recruiting and Retaining Members Each year in Key Club is a cycle. As a high school organization, our members typically enter somewhere around freshman year, grow through the system, gain leadership roles, and move on to the next stage of the K-family. As straightforward as the system seems, there are two crucial factors in making the system flow: retention and recruitment. Both factors play a crucial role in allowing Key Club to maintain its strength, and you bet I'm going to take the extra paragraphs to tell you why. A school year progresses and graduating high school students head off to college (at least most of our amazingly intelligent Key Club members do). In a situation like this, it might seem like a tragic loss to have 1/4 of our membership base move away, but, it is no loss if a whole class of young, freshman students is consistently replacing those fleeing seniors. Recruitment is great because it brings new minds to the table, either matching or growing upon the group of students who came before them. With great recruitment, a club will never shrink! It is a very simple task to perform. To improve your club's recruitment rate, pass out fliers to incoming freshmen, host sessions at nearby primary schools/middle schools promoting the ideals of Key Club, or simply host a stand at your school's registration. While recruitment draws in new members to replace those who have moved on, retention is vital to maintain the motivation of those who are currently members of the club. This task may not always seem easy. Each club has its slow times of the year where there is a sizeable gap between one project and the next, but it is our duty to make sure our members don't lose interest. Most members joined because they want to provide a helping hand when possible, so the best way to satisfy that interest is by scheduling as many projects as possible! Obviously this isn't always a possibility, but there are still many ways to beef up Key Club. One possible way is by making club meetings interesting by bringing food and snacks to meetings when possible or have members build chairs, make blankets, or perform physical service at the meeting so they are busy and involved. You might even want to take a survey to see what members are looking to do in your club. To say it plainly: always try to keep the crowd on their toes. By Samuel Simon, Lieutenant Governor-Division 9 Submitting Key to Caring Articles Are you interested in writing an article for the Key to Caring? If so, don’t hesitate to submit an article! They can be about a wide variety of subjects, such as outstanding individuals or success in either your club or your Division! If you have any other ideas for subjects to write about, feel free to submit it! Your article will be featured in an issue of the Key to Caring and could be inspiration for another Key Clubber to take a step in the club! Articles can be submitted on the WIUM Key Club website. If you have any questions on writing articles or if you would like to brainstorm ideas for articles, feel free to contact Jason Shebilske anytime. His contact information can be found on the final page of this issue. Page 4
Time Management 101 How does the average high-schooler spend 24 hours in one day? Well, about 8.1 hours are spent sleeping (or in my case, dreaming about becoming the next Beyonce), while a combined total of 8.4 hours are spent on leisure/sports activities, travel, grooming, eating, and working. That leaves about 7.5 hours for school-related work, which in reality isn’t that much when you look at the fact that a majority of that is spent at school. With all that said, how in the world is one to successfully manage his/her time in a way that efficiently balances important tasks like homework with fun things like watching the newest episode of American Horror Story on Netflix? A good first step to take is to find some time where you can sit down for a while and simply jot down all the work, conversations, and activities you experienced in the past week. This way you can visualize how much of your week is spent doing things that produce effective results. You can then prioritize and physically schedule when and how much time you spend on these important tasks. A simple to-do list can only do so much, because you’ll see what needs to be done, but what you may not see is that the first task on your list could eat up hours, rather than minutes. Once you have a general plan about how much time to spend on important things, you should also schedule time for interruptions; plan time to be pulled away from what you’re doing. Everyone needs bathroom breaks and nap times (assuming you’re not a robot…), so leave time in your schedule for them. Every morning, leave some time (10 to 15 minutes would be ideal) to carefully go through everything you plan to accomplish that day. Do you take showers in the morning? While you’re lathering up, you could use that time to plan out what you want to wear, go through some quick facts for your quiz first hour, estimate what time you’re going to pick up your little brother from soccer practice, and approximate the time you can start on your homework after coming home from play practice. If you plan your time out carefully, you’ll even leave a few minutes at the end to belt out a couple notes of Sam Smith’s latest song. Still finding that you have difficulties resisting the lure of procrastination? Here’s a tip from my personal experience. I love listening to music, but I found that I can’t work very efficiently if music is playing while I try to do my homework. Here’s how I solved my dilemma: I told myself, “Ok, you’re going to do the first 10 problems on this Chemistry worksheet, then you can listen to one of your favorite songs.” I kept doing this until I finished the whole worksheet. I have found over time that this method has really helped me work faster, because as humans, incentives really can serve as motivators to work harder. One important side-effect to avoid would be rushing. Although you’re motivated to finish in order to receive the incentive, you may work faster and with less care. To bypass this problem, simply move away all watches and clocks until you’re done with your work. By Phoebe Hu, Lieutenant Governor-Division 14 Page 5
Page 1 and 2: Key to Caring Official Bulletin of
Page 3: Welcoming Warriors at Wausau West A
Page 7 and 8: International Trustee Introduction
Page 9 and 10: District Project: Camp Wawbeek and
Page 11 and 12: Page 11 DCON 2016 Promotion

Key to Caring Issue 2-FINAL

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