New Book: Turning Parents into Volunteers by Rhonda Jones

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Creating a parent volunteer program just became easier! Turning Parents into Volunteers, written by former teacher and parent involvement coordinator Rhonda Jones, is a comprehensive guide for recruiting, training, and maintaining parent volunteers.

The book contains over 175 pages of step-by-step instructions, tips, ideas, and forms to make any parent or school volunteer program a success.

“There are many benefits to recruiting volunteers to assist with classroom and school operations,” says Jones.  “Having parent volunteers helps to enhance the class curriculum, and increases student achievement and teacher appreciation,” she stated.

The objective of the book is to help teachers learn what is parent involvement and what it takes to create a success classroom volunteer program.

According to Jones, many educators often blame parents for not wanting to participate in their children’s education, yet many studies prove that given the opportunity, parents will participate despite the overwhelming myth that they just don’t care.

This perception may be partly true for some families, but research suggests, by far, that the greatest obstacle to parent involvement is the teachers themselves. Turning Parents into Volunteers uncovers the barriers to parent involvement and ways to overcome them.

Also not knowing how to effectively work with parents was identified as a major reason teachers don’t use classroom volunteers. Similarly, unclear expectations of teachers and schools in the volunteer process, also perpetuates a lack of parent participation. Turning Parents Into Volunteers gives many useful examples of how to most efficient use of volunteers for your grade-level.

Turning Parents into Volunteers is written for the individual teacher who wants to establish an effective parent volunteer program in his or her classroom. However, the ultimate goal is that it would become a school-wide affair. School volunteer coordinators can also develop and organize a school-wide volunteer program.

Even with the intrinsic rewards parents gain from knowing they are helping others, it’s important to be mindful of ways to show school volunteers they are appreciated. Instead of leaving volunteer recognition to chance, setting up a calendar system in advance can ensure that no volunteer goes unnoticed. The book provides a years worth of ways to tell volunteers they’re special and encourage them in their efforts.

Additional chapters include instructions on how to recruit school volunteers, defining appropriate volunteer duties and training, rewarding and evaluating volunteers, a complete school volunteer orientation agenda with training materials, tools of the trade, an abundance of recruiting and record-keeping forms and how to involve the whole school in creating a volunteer program.

The book retails for $29.00 and when ordered on author’s website, http://www.parent-volunteers.com, buyers receive downloadable MS templates of all forms that can be customized for individual school use. Turning Parents into Volunteers also available on Amazon.com.

New Book, Turning Parents into Volunteers  About the Author

Rhonda Jones, MS, as a 11-year veteran elementary school teacher, Rhonda developed a successful classroom volunteer program that promoted student achievement and encouraged parental support both in and outside the classroom. To learn more visit her website at http://www.parent-volunteers.com.