Harness the Power of Parents, Volunteers, Student Aides, and Teacher's Aides
If you're not harnessing the power of volunteers, you're denying parents and others the joy they experience when they help others. As Dr. Alan Loy McGinnis, family therapist, says in his book Bringing Out the Best in People: “There is simply no substitute for the rewards of helping other people. …” Surely, it's time to let volunteers into your classroom.
Use caution before allowing parent volunteers to enter your classroom. Meet with these adults beforehand and briefly interview them to see if they possess the knowledge and character to work responsibly with children. If they seem at all questionable, thank them profusely and formulate an excuse for why you won't be able to use them this year.
Send a cheery letter home with all your students at the beginning of the school year, asking parents to please consider donating their time, energy, and intelligence to helping your students. Parents can generally photocopy papers, cut construction paper and oak tag, grade work papers, create bulletin boards, work with small reading groups or math groups per your instructions, and do a million other important and time-saving (for you) tasks.
If your school sends you a student aide, utilize him in the same ways you would utilize a parent volunteer — except, perhaps, for small-group instruction, which is often better left to your adult volunteers. Student aides can also file work papers in student dossiers, grade consumable workbooks using your answer key, glue and staple papers, deliver documents to the office, and so forth.
Teacher's aides aren't strictly volunteers because they're paid by the district; yet the spirit of volunteerism is alive in them, too. Their wages are quite low and there are usually other jobs they could be doing to make more money; they simply enjoy helping kids. Use these aides for secretarial duties, small-group instruction, and most importantly, individual student tutoring.
