Nip volunteer problems in the bud

Training provides confidence, prevents unnecessary conflict

Volunteers are like employees in many ways. They offer skills to an organization to help complete a goal, they are expected to fulfill commitments like showing up to work on time and dressed appropriately, and they volunteer for many different reasons.

Volunteers are also like employees in the sense that proper training and orientation are necessary for them to feel comfortable and work effectively.

According to a June 2010 Graduation Matters Missoula survey of MCPS teachers, the No. 1 reason K-12 teachers in our district didn’t utilize volunteers in their classroom last year was “I don’t have enough time to prepare and train volunteers.”

Teachers are busy people. They balance in-school hours of instruction with at-home efforts of grading and preparing materials. It’s easy to see how budgeting extra time to train volunteers can fall by the wayside.

However, by compiling training and orientation materials ahead of time, preparing and training a classroom volunteer can be as simple as offering a packet of information about school policies on dress, drugs and confidentiality, curriculum material, anonymous examples of student work related to their volunteer position, and a form with contact information for their direct supervisor and school administration.

Take an afternoon to compile whatever materials you think a volunteer would need to hit the ground running in your classroom as an aide, presenter, tutor or at-home assistant and make a volunteer orientation packet.

Keep a few hard copies on hand for an impromptu offer to help out in the class and make a digital folder of the material that can be easily attached to an e-mail.

The time a good volunteer can free up for a teacher will be well worth the initial effort of creating an orientation packet. However, don’t forget to have one-on-one interaction with your volunteer. On their first day, remember to tell them where to park, what restrooms they can use in the building, and how much their time commitment means to you and the school.