Should I volunteer at my child's school?
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Anonymous
| My kid will be starting kindergarten in the fall, and I have heard that volunteering/presence in the school helps kids get preferential treatment at school. So, any advice or tips to maximize the benefits of my volunteering for my kid? I am a super introvert, so tips for dealing with that are appreciated. WFH flexible job so I can be available during the school day. |
Anonymous
| Volunteer if you want/have time, or don't if you can't. Just be nice and pleasant in general in your interactions with the school. But you don't need to volunteer in order for your kid to get preferential treatment. |
Anonymous
| What kind of preferential treatment are you looking for from an elementary school? |
Anonymous
| I haven’t seen preferential treatment, but by volunteering in the school you get a feel for the dynamics and can understand and guide your child better. My friend who is an introvert prefers to volunteer in the library, but I find the biggest bang for my volunteer buck is being in my kids classroom as a guest reader or party helper. Volunteering on field day or in the cafeteria is much rougher. Also I always send in extra boxes of tissues and hand sanitizer to my kids class. |
Anonymous
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I volunteered a lot when our kids were in elementary because my job was flexible. They definitely didn’t receive any preferential treatment but I did get a good feeling for various teachers and the way things were run.
As someone else mentioned, the library is a great place to volunteer and is often forgotten about. Lots of people only want to volunteer in the classroom. |
Anonymous
| I volunteered a lot at my kids' elementary library, because I love libraries. No preferential treatment. Trust me, I know based on some of their teacher placements. But the highlight of that whole time was when my kid would light up if he saw me when his class came to the library. It's a memory I cherish especially now that he's a teen. |
Anonymous
| You need public consensus before you decide to volunteer at your kid’s school? |
Anonymous
+1. Seriously laughable. |
Anonymous
+1 I'm planning to volunteer so I can get to know teachers/admins/staff and have a line of communication if my kid needs help or correction. I think it's pretty bizarre to volunteer so your kid gets better snacks or fewer consequences for bad behavior or whatever OP is imagining. |
Anonymous
I agree that OP's post is silly. But come on, she obviously means teacher placements. Or selected for certain helper roles -- or little speaking parts at performances, etc. |
Anonymous
Two of those three things are clinically insane expectations (especially for a kindergartener), and the teacher placement thing is only taken seriously in private schools IME. Public schools don't want to hear it and won't move a kid absent extreme circumstances. And the teacher you're requesting really isn't flattered, she sees you as a self-advertised pain in the neck from the day of the request. |
Anonymous
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You sound as if it's fine for a child to get preferential treatment in exchange for their parent helping out at school. It's not.
I was on the board of my kids' school PTA for many years, and was in the building a lot, organizing and helping out with various events. My kids did not receive preferential treatment, I did not ask for special placement or favors. That would have been ethically wrong. However, working with the administration, teachers and staff allows parents to understand what it is that a school can and cannot do. Resources are limited. They should be directed to the neediest cases first. Knowing how a school works allows parents to understand what to ask for if their kid really needs help: who to contact, what are reasonable accommodations, and how long it might be until the issue is addressed. It keeps parents realistic, instead of fuming that something doesn't get fixed instantly. Conversely, if the administration and teachers see you genuinely helping (instead of creating more nonsense busywork some PTA parents dream up!), and if your kid really does develop a problem, they will be more inclined to believe you, because a measure of trust has been established. I see this most often with parents of kids with special needs, some of whom volunteer so they can observe their child in the classroom, and understand how to make available services and accommodations work for their kid. Teachers see these parents doing their best, and skip the notion that bad parenting is at the root of their kid's behavioral issues. But procotols and procedures still need to be followed, and parents cannot demand something outside of the rulebook. |
Anonymous
Yes, I agree...it doesn't work. Volunteering does not lead to preferred teacher placement. But she's not the first to (misguidedly) think it might. And I just thought it was kind of ridiculous that you though OP meant snacks  The rest of us knew what she was getting at.
At our public, you can fill out a "placement survey" at the end of each year where you tell the school info/concerns about your kid that might be helpful in building next year's classrooms. Of course, a lot of people use it to ask that their kid not be placed with X kid, etc. There are some parents who I think get those requests honored more than others. The kids of the PTA moms at my school do get all these little roles. Like, they got to help lead tours at the recent "kindergarten round up" event. They got some special roles at field day. They end up in the pictures in the principal's weekly newsletter. But, actually, I don't even think that's unfair because their parents are the ones helping with all that stuff. |
Anonymous
I think it’s the opposite- they might put good kids with engaged parents with a more mediocre teacher knowing the parents will supplement at home. Anyway I did make a teacher request for my second based on his pre school teachers telling me I should but the principal said she doesn’t do that but will keep in mind he’s a high energy kid. 🤷♀️ |
Anonymous
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Yes, you should volunteer at your child’s school, if you can without hardship, because helping when you can is a good thing.
No, you should neither expect nor desire preferential treatment for your child, regardless of how much you volunteer. Kids can’t control what their parents do. Your volunteering does not make your child any more deserving, and another child whose parents are uninvolved is not less deserving. But volunteering at school will help all kids, including yours. While there are roles for extroverts, many of the volunteer tasks are low key and minimal visibility. I probably spent hundreds of hours over the years alone in the copy room making copies for the teachers. Papers need to be sorted and put in each child’s folders. Shapes need to be cut out of construction paper. If the volunteer can do the boring grunt work, it frees the teacher up to spend more of her time and energy focusing on the kids. |