I designed a volunteer program with a little help from our Title I parent liason and along with a comittee fixed a booklet that included teachers schedules, time sheets, and a few other things. I had trainings that included confidentiality. This is required by staff on a yearly basis as well as volunteers. I also tried to get them familiar with all the machines in the workroom, had a library training (we do not have an aide for our library and volunteers are much needed), I had a staff member to go over saftey drill procedures (I was caught in a few of those at first and didn't exactly know what to do), I also explained to them that some teachers do not feel comfortable with volunteers but the majority at our school does. I encourage them to volunteer in other areas if the teacher or child doesn't seem comfortable with them in the room and explain to them that teachers are as afraid of us as we are of them. The problem I faced the most is parents waiting to be asked and teachers afraid to ask. So I fixed up a volunteer book for the work room with vol phone numbers and areas of interests and encouraged teachers to come to me if they needed a volunteer and did not have time to look one up. I found myself doing that alot. I think that the teachers felt more comfortable having another parent to ask and if a parent was unable they were more comfortable telling me no. I also set up a task board in the work room where teachers could list needed task and a volunteer could sign in on it. This wasn't very successful, so I offered to make a task sheet to put by their sign-in sheets. No one wanted that. Lesson learned, but the volunteers loved it.
This year the volunteer program was totally ignored among many other things, I am considering running for president again and would also love any advice on how to get volunteerism energized again. We have lost many volunteers this year.
I don't have a form on my computer, but I think we just sent out a letter with some voulunteer poeitions listed and and left room at the bottom for parents to write in any of there own comments on improving the PTO. We got more teacher involvement by making it manditory to attend 1 PTO function and 1 meeting before they could request funds from us. Since ourr school district cut field trips this year and our PTO offered to pay for some of them belive me we have had lots of teacher participation and lots of request. We have grown our PTO this year from about 6 members last year to a full house (60+) per meeting. We also offer a raffle every meeting( prizes have all been donated) and a student activity at each meeting...Kids voting(October meeting), 3rd grade Scence Fair right before a meeting, Fire saftety, etc...We will be having a police officer and a fire truck at our next meeting to teach Summer Saftey to our students before we leave for summer break.
To all those experienced in getting volunteers in your classroom,
We reviving a pto and my first thought was on this subject. This is where I want to put my energy. If you have any kind of survey materials you use and are willing to share please do. I have the ones done by PTA and one other Pto. If there are training programs or anything you do that you feel enhances your program or makes those teachers that shy away from volunteers feel better about inviting them in please let me know.Don't get me wrong I think being an officer will get easier but, I really want to get back to helping our children learn.
