When you help out at your dc's school, what do you do?

[katepol]

I ask because it seems like most people seem to hear children read, or do one to one stuff, with a specific purpose or objective (ie get johnny to do number bonds to ten etc).

I helped out in a Yr 1 class last year and although I did occasionally listen to readers, I more frequently took children out of the classroom, to do work around the school (ie identifying things), or to the ICT suite. Sometimes the tasks were pretty vague, and not well set up. I often had groups of 6 very mixed ability children.

I was also given groups of 6 to do things like painting (colour blending), or constructing clay figures. Quite often I was given groups with several 'typical' summer-born boys .

Am I being paranoid in thinking the teacher didn't like me?!

I found the classroom to be very disorganised, lots of different activities going on with children being shunted around all the time, and everything rushed to tick boxes rather than attention to detail or anything in depth. Is this normal too?

All experiences welcome...

[Alambil]

I've worked in 3 schools for the last 4 years whilst I did my degree. The first and current schools have been the best - the teacher knows I don't want to be treated as "just" a parent-volunteer but a TA as I need the experience for my post-grad application. The second school I worked in was useless - the head was more interested in her shoes than the kids (or so it seemed) and they had no worries in yakking about the "naughty / bad" children infront of me - an outsider who had not signed a confidentiality contract or anything (not that I would have spread the word, but I could have...)

The school I'm in now is DS's school and I have only been there 2 days (am doing 2 days a week) - so far, they have made me sign a confidentiality contract, given me a proper staff badge and the teacher today had me marking books with her (obviously telling me where to correct / what to look for).

Maybe you could ask to be more like a TA and be more "hands on" with the proper helping out ? have you any idea if the class is always organised in this way? The 2nd school I was in seemed to be like this - very disorganised, horrid teacher (barked at the kids - not nice at all ... needed early retirement IMO!) and her attitude, in that she seemed to not want to be there, came out in her planning - or lack thereof.

[katepol]

Thanks LF. Your experiences reminded me that I was not checked (CRB/Police)at all before I started (fortunately I am fully cleared due to my last job), and yet I was allowed to take children on their own out of the classroom completely unsupervised. There ws no mention of not talking about what had gone on in the classroom either (although obviously I didn't), let alone a confidentiality agreement.
The whole experience felt pretty ramshackle tbh. The teacher apologised to me several times when carpet-time sessions went on too long and the children got bored and tuned out, and I figured she just didn't want me in the classroom - hence the amount of ICT-suite based activities...

[rapunzelle]

It does sound disorganised. We really value our parent helpers and run regular workshops in supporting reading, writing and numeracy. They have a correspondence book with the class teacher as it is often difficult to communicate during sessions, and we have a coffee morning each half term for all our parent volunteers to chat & share experiences. This way I also keep on top of what skills particular individuals have so that I can target specific parents towards ICT, sport or drama.