Welcoming Parent Volunteers–7 Ideas

We hear from many of you who want to get routines and procedures running smoothly before inviting parents into the learning community. So, how do we graciously handle the eager parents who want to help? We assure parents that they will be welcome into the classroom once independent behaviors are in place, and we offer a menu of ways parents can support us immediately. Those who want to get started right away are usually happy to select from the variety of opportunities. Some ideas follow:

• Enlist artsy folks to do the bulletin boards outside the classroom.
• Have technology-minded parents scan and save student work. They might help with cropping, organizing, and saving photos for classroom blogs, scrapbooks, bulletin boards, etc.
• Provide Cinderella chores. We've had wonderful parents come once a week to give the tables, counters, and desktops a good scrubbing after or before school.
• Organize secretarial chores. Copying, folding, stapling, etc. can all be done in the workroom or at home.
• Invite book lovers to be guest readers outside of the Daily 5 block.
• Organize odds-and-ends jobs, like sharpening pencils, stuffing weekly folders, and preparing art and/or science materials for projects and explorations. These can all be done outside the classroom or outside of the school day.
• Ask for donations of homemade play dough for word work.

You will notice that we do not have parents do any teaching of children. That is our job. That is what we went to school for and what we get paid for. We don't want to minimize our value by sending the impression that even a parent volunteer can teach students!

You can probably think of other ideas, too. Having parents who want to team with us is such a gift. We always want to provide the opportunities, as well as high levels of appreciation, when they desire to be involved.