{"id":7196,"date":"2010-07-13T17:24:11","date_gmt":"2010-07-14T00:24:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/?p=7196"},"modified":"2010-07-31T19:18:48","modified_gmt":"2010-08-01T02:18:48","slug":"volunteer-management-for-religious-education","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/?p=7196","title":{"rendered":"Volunteer management for religious education"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today in the New DRE (Director of Religious Education) workshop, one of the topics we addressed was volunteer management, and we focused on volunteer teachers. I said that the way I think about volunteer management is that it is a cycle that begins with supporting<\/em> your current volunteers, then moves to recognizing<\/em> volunteers at the end of a semester or year (or for volunteers completing service), then moves to recruiting<\/em> new volunteers (or recruiting current volunteers to volunteer for another semester or year), then moves to training<\/em> volunteers beginning service.<\/p>\n

I asked workshop participants to brainstorm ideas for ways that we can support, recognize, recruit, and train religious education volunteers (especially volunteer teachers). Below is the list of ideas they generated:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Supporting current religious education volunteers<\/strong><\/p>\n

(N.B.: We start with support, because in real life we always have at least some volunteers in place whom we have to support.)<\/em><\/p>\n

making sure needed materials are available
\nsending reminder emails
\ncheck in with them
\nbe available for questions or problem solving
\nongoing recognition, “stroking”
\nhave children do something for them, e.g., write notes or draw pictures
\ngive teachers input in ongoing curriculum development
\nempowering teachers to change curriculum
\nin-service trainings
\ncoaching
\nmentoring
\nsafe dialogue with the DRE
\nclean and safe classrooms
\ncommunicating with volunteers in a timely manner
\nclear chain of accountability
\nchocolate
\nfeed them special food
\ncoffee, tea
\nmonthly teacher meetings<\/p>\n

———<\/p>\n

Recognizing religious education volunteers<\/strong><\/p>\n

mention in newsletter
\nrecognize during religious education worship service
\nrecognize during during regular service
\nteacher appreciation breakfast
\nmassages
\nspecial hats they get to keep
\nribbon, pin, other identifier on name tags
\npictures of RE teachers on bulletin board
\ngeneral check-in
\nsaying: “You’re doing a great job!”
\nsending thank you notes
\nhaving the kids thank them
\nhave non-teaching parents talk about impact teachers have on their kids
\nask volunteers how they want to be recognized<\/p>\n

———<\/p>\n

Recruiting religious education volunteers<\/strong><\/p>\n

recruit existing volunteers
\nask prospective volunteers face-to-face, tell them why you think they would be good
\nannouncement in newsletter
\nannouncement in service
\nput another announcement in newsletter
\npost signs
\nbig sign-up sheet
\nget RE Committee to help recruit
\nassign someone to recruit
\nbuild a culture of high expectations, everyone will engage in a ministry
\nasking people what they need to become a teacher
\nhaving options other than just teaching
\nvolunteer surveys
\nmake teaching so satisfying, people want to volunteer<\/p>\n

———<\/p>\n

Training religious education volunteers (before their service begins)<\/strong><\/p>\n

(N.B.: I subscribe to the theory that adult volunteers tend to learn best when confronting immediate problems. Therefore, in-service training and coaching (which I have included under support) work better than a big chunk of up-front training, and I would devote much less time to an elaborate formal training programs before volunteer service begins. See Carl George’s<\/em>The Coming Church Revolution: Prepare Your Leaders for the Future for more on this concept.<\/em><\/p>\n

provide beginning of the year orientation\/training
\nprovide mandatory safety training (universal health precautions, child protection, emergencies)
\nprovide classroom management training<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today in the New DRE (Director of Religious Education) workshop, one of the topics we addressed was volunteer management, and we focused on volunteer teachers. I said that the way I think about volunteer management is that it is a cycle that begins with supporting your current volunteers, then moves to recognizing volunteers at the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,12],"tags":[526],"class_list":["post-7196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-church-administration","category-religious-education","tag-new-dre-workshop"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7196"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7196\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7376,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7196\/revisions\/7376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}