The Care and Feeding of Volunteers: A Reminder for School Administrators

About the time my daughter was graduating from high school a number of years ago, I too was graduating from the Los Angeles Unified School District. That year marked my 20th and last year of being a parent volunteer and leader.

I started to volunteer and lead when my son started in Kindergarten some 20 years prior. During the course of many years of motivations, involvements, participations, interventions, stakeholderisms, and interactions, I learned a great deal about what it takes to be a parent leader in a public school.

I certainly can't say that I learned everything I know from the Kindergarten Parent (KP) experience, but so much was based on the energy that existed there. If you could bottle the energy of KP's , you could run a thousand schools without worrying about who will pay for it.

So much of what I learned came from the way I was welcomed in and made to feel that my presence, involvement, and participation was not simply accepted, but thoroughly needed and appreciated. Some of the pearls I gathered while in my formative years as a parent leader included:

• The Power of Thank You is Magical
• Asking for opinions, and acting on those opinions creates connections
• Asking for help says that you value the person you are asking
• Never presume you've sought and received enough input from volunteers
• Parents want to be treated like partners, maybe even consumers, but not like large students

Like anywhere else in the world of managing things, some administrators get it (GI's), others think they do, and others fail dramatically. The GI's have a long line of parents wanting to help manage the educational adventure. GI's view parent involvement as something more than another evaluation column.

If you are going to be happy where your children go to school, or where you choose to volunteer, look for the GI's. If there aren't any at the top, perhaps it's time to look elsewhere.