Classroom volunteerism plan

The following was sent to teachers today about our plan for increasing classroom volunteers:

Dear Chugach Teachers:

We had an excellent parent coordinator meeting this morning, wherein I passed on the thoughts from Wednesday's staff meeting and presented a plan Martha and I had sketched to address the challenges and opportunities of increasing volunteerism at Chugach.

Short version: Your coordinators will be contacting you for one-on-one meetings to find ways to make volunteers available to you in the most effective way for your classroom. Key agenda items will be establishing a sense of the needs (and please, think big, as we are trying for a quantum leap), setting up a communication system that works for both sides, and going over class lists and surveys to developed a shared feel for the available resources.

Your coordinators will then call each of the parents in your family group to get a better sense of their skills and availability in relation to your needs.

All this is going toward the goals of matching people to jobs so you have all the help you need, with minimal effort on your part. Our concept is that a personalized process of talking to each parent will work best. Coordinators will try to meet parents at their own level, with baby steps for those who haven't developed the volunteering habit. Their goal will be to become match-makers between the skills of individual parents and particular classroom needs.

Here is the plan as we laid it out with the coodinators:

1. Classroom volunteer needs

a. Our goal for volunteerism at Chugach

i. Better than other schools?

ii. Everyone volunteers 36 hours/year?

iii. Every teacher has all the volunteers she can use?

b. Teacher feedback and needs

i. Lack of volunteer help in the classroom

ii. Need for a strategy to get parents into the classroom

1. Identify volunteers/skills and bring in new people

2. Communicate needs to potential volunteers positively, individually (going back to pre-email days)

3. Match parents to jobs effectively

4. Reduce work load on teachers (so that PCs are point of contact)

c. Strategy outline

i. PCs meet with teachers

1. Establish communication routine between PC and teacher

a. Regular meetings or phone calls?

b. Job lists?

c. Amount of advance warning needed to get volunteers?

2. Review with teacher the class list, surveys, current participation levels

ii. Call parents for interests, availability, skills; as needed to expand on survey

iii. Communicate with teachers again to share information gleaned, begin matching volunteers to jobs.


feedback: parent coordinators seemed enthusiastic to do this and make it work. Some of their concerns were--
* Predictability for parents who need to plan their work schedule around volunteer opportunities;
* Effort at communicating with volunteers when plans change and they are not needed;
* Freshening up of job lists and improved communication of casual volunteer needs so opportunities don't go to waste--including clarifying that every parent can help every class;
* Need for diplomacy and discretion on the part of coordinators so teachers control the agenda in the classroom (your day shouldn't work around volunteers; volunteers should work around your day).

Thanks for your help on this. Please send feedback to me or Martha about how it is working out.

-Charles and Martha

PS to teachers: I regret something I said in the staff meeting, and I said it much better in the coordinator meeting. It's about how we value volunteers. In the staff meeting I put it in terms of some high-wage earner who is giving his or her time. A better way of thinking of it is a single mom with two jobs who takes unpaid time off to come in. That's worth a lot, and we should make sure such a precious resource is well used. That's the coordinator's job, and the teacher's job.