Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s a pretty blurred line, slippery slope… I don’t think they should get preferential treatment. But I did volunteer a lot, which put me in the front office a lot, and face time in passing with lots of teachers and students. It gave me an advantage in that I had a better sense of which teachers cared, which students needed remedial help, which students were goofs whom I’d rather not have my child grouped with. Did the school say “Oh thanks so much for volunteering and donating generously. Please take first pick of teachers and tell us of any friend group issues!”? No. But I was able to have conversations which naturally happened over time and over being around the school a lot.

You are the type that teachers don’t like. Using volunteering so that you gossip and snoop. Why would you make it your business to know who needed academic help and why would you need to. The only way you would know is if you rummaged through their files and found the IEP packets.

And you’re observing kids to find the kids who are “goofs” whatever that means. Such a valuable resource you are 🤮

Rummaging around to find IEP files? Have you spent any time volunteering at school or in classrooms? You can be a class reader for 15 minutes and know right away which children are problematic. They have an aide or are constantly being primed by the teacher. Everybody who volunteers knows who these one or two kids are. I don’t gossip about that, so if you don’t volunteer, you don’t know.

Our schools don't use parents to come in and read. Not only for the reason of parents gossiping about children but it’s just not helpful. Parents go in when invited for a demonstration or show of artwork in the younger years. I know I’ve never noticed who has the aide or who is disruptive.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s a pretty blurred line, slippery slope… I don’t think they should get preferential treatment. But I did volunteer a lot, which put me in the front office a lot, and face time in passing with lots of teachers and students. It gave me an advantage in that I had a better sense of which teachers cared, which students needed remedial help, which students were goofs whom I’d rather not have my child grouped with. Did the school say “Oh thanks so much for volunteering and donating generously. Please take first pick of teachers and tell us of any friend group issues!”? No. But I was able to have conversations which naturally happened over time and over being around the school a lot.

You are the type that teachers don’t like. Using volunteering so that you gossip and snoop. Why would you make it your business to know who needed academic help and why would you need to. The only way you would know is if you rummaged through their files and found the IEP packets.

And you’re observing kids to find the kids who are “goofs” whatever that means. Such a valuable resource you are 🤮

Rummaging around to find IEP files? Have you spent any time volunteering at school or in classrooms? You can be a class reader for 15 minutes and know right away which children are problematic. They have an aide or are constantly being primed by the teacher. Everybody who volunteers knows who these one or two kids are. I don’t gossip about that, so if you don’t volunteer, you don’t know.

Anonymous wrote:No. There should be no "compensation" for "volunteering". That misses the WHOLE point of the concept of volunteering.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I hope not, that's gross.

What I do get out of volunteering is more facetime with the teacher, which means that instead of waiting for something serious to happen to necessitate a call home, he can flag any smallish issues so I can redirect before they get bigger. And I get to observe (some) interpersonal dynamics myself, so I can start conversations at home about my kid's relationship with various peers and have some context for who we're talking about, whether s/he was likely to be joking if they did something that hurt my kid's feelings, etc.

holy helicopter please land.

Anonymous wrote:I hope not, that's gross.

What I do get out of volunteering is more facetime with the teacher, which means that instead of waiting for something serious to happen to necessitate a call home, he can flag any smallish issues so I can redirect before they get bigger. And I get to observe (some) interpersonal dynamics myself, so I can start conversations at home about my kid's relationship with various peers and have some context for who we're talking about, whether s/he was likely to be joking if they did something that hurt my kid's feelings, etc.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s a pretty blurred line, slippery slope… I don’t think they should get preferential treatment. But I did volunteer a lot, which put me in the front office a lot, and face time in passing with lots of teachers and students. It gave me an advantage in that I had a better sense of which teachers cared, which students needed remedial help, which students were goofs whom I’d rather not have my child grouped with. Did the school say “Oh thanks so much for volunteering and donating generously. Please take first pick of teachers and tell us of any friend group issues!”? No. But I was able to have conversations which naturally happened over time and over being around the school a lot.

You are the type that teachers don’t like. Using volunteering so that you gossip and snoop. Why would you make it your business to know who needed academic help and why would you need to. The only way you would know is if you rummaged through their files and found the IEP packets.

And you’re observing kids to find the kids who are “goofs” whatever that means. Such a valuable resource you are 🤮

Anonymous wrote:It’s a pretty blurred line, slippery slope… I don’t think they should get preferential treatment. But I did volunteer a lot, which put me in the front office a lot, and face time in passing with lots of teachers and students. It gave me an advantage in that I had a better sense of which teachers cared, which students needed remedial help, which students were goofs whom I’d rather not have my child grouped with. Did the school say “Oh thanks so much for volunteering and donating generously. Please take first pick of teachers and tell us of any friend group issues!”? No. But I was able to have conversations which naturally happened over time and over being around the school a lot.

Anonymous wrote:As a blanket statement, no. Some students have parents who are working 2 jobs, or are in foster care, and they should absolutely not be penalized for not having basically a SAHP who can volunteer 10 hours a week or a rich parent who can fund the entire PTA.

If we are allowed nuance- I do think that if a parent is an unusually helpful volunteer, or takes on volunteer tasks that one one wants (everyone wants to chaperone the cute half day field trip with their child, no one wants to volunteer to mop the cafeteria floors and take all the trash to the dump after the school carnival ends at 9pm), it should not be frowned upon if that kid's family maybe gets picked to run the most fun carnival booth, or maybe if a parent volunteers to be the backstage mom at a drama club performance- therefore not getting to watch her child perform, since she's backstage, this is a classic job that no one signs up for ever in our school's drama club- then that student's family (the other parent, etc) gets front row seats to the performance and a free copy of the DVD recording to show to the backstage mom afterwords.