Welcome to edWeb.net’s using Emerging technology to Improve Your School Library Program session 14. Today we will discuss How to Enlist (and Keep) Volunteers: Students and Parents, and Out of the Box Ideas for "Stretched" Librarians”.

Let’s take a moment to thank our host, edWeb.net, and our sponsor, Follett Software Company for this chance to connect.

Tweeting?

It occurred to me last weekend that today’s session may actually occur during the school day for many of you. Normally it would have taken place last week, which would have worked out for everyone, but I was away on vacation with my family and I pushed it back a week without realizing how many districts start in mid-August. I apologize and we will be mindful of this in the future. Thanks for joining us in spite of your “back to school” status! We appreciate your commitment!

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New Canaan High School’s had a parent volunteer corps since before I arrived there. A handful of parents would come in for an hour or two once every week or so to shelve books, and that was that.

As the program became more embedded, our need for volunteers expanded. Renovating the library meant that we moved the collection four times, and while we hired a library moving service for the BIG move, the one to another facility, the other moves were more like shifts – and for each one of those we recruited a parent coordinator who organized the entire project: scheduling, recruiting, purchasing supplies, etc…

I don’t talk about this much in these sessions. I’ve been at New Canaan for a decade now, but before that I taught in Bridgeport, CT – an urban district, and before that in Brooklyn, NY – an inner city school system. So I understand that what I just said may seem utterly ridiculous if you teach in a socioeconomically challenged community. It’s easy to recruit parent volunteers when parents don’t work!

It’s a lot harder when grandma is raising 3 kids and trying to hold down two jobs. It doesn’t take a lot of volunteers to have a volunteer program. Two or three community members can make a lot of things happen.

So before I talk further about how our volunteer program has developed, I want to throw out a few suggestions for teacher librarians who cannot rely on more than one or two parent volunteers – and even where that may be a reach.

Get in touch with your public library! Chances are, they have already established a volunteer program. When I taught in Bridgeport, we had an amazing relationship with our public librarians, and they would bend over backwards to help us. We also reached out to local charities to secure grant funding for special collaborative projects with the public library. Our students learned more about the value of collaboration – particularly where resources were scarce.

Reach out to community centers. Ask the United Way. Contact nearby organizations who rely on community service and ask for suggestions. Shelters, food banks, crisis centers, salvation army all rely on volunteers. Ask them where they get their people. Sometimes, they have more than they can handle and have to turn folks away. AARP is a great connection. They try to match seniors with community organizations who need volunteers.

When we bring in volunteers from the outside, we notify our human resources department. There is a risk with exposing strangers to children. Our faculty and staff members are screened and fingerprinted before they are allowed to work with students, and your district may want to run volunteers through the some variation of that screening process. I made the mistake of bypassing our HR department once. I won’t do it again.

If your volunteers are using school computers, vet their service through your tech department. I recommend having them sign an AUP/RUA, and issuing each volunteer a unique log on.

Students themselves can make great volunteers. What I am about to say is completely anecdotal, so please understand that this is based on my experience and nothing else. You are free to tell me I am crazy. I have had more success enlisting student helpers in underserved districts than in well-funded ones. It would make a great subject for research, and I won’t speculate as to why this was the case. But here is the thing that makes that point relevant: The less parent volunteers I’ve had access to, the easier it was to recruit student volunteers.

Unfortunately, it is not enough to get folks to volunteer. People’s hearts are often in the right place,

but then life gets in the way. So there are a few critical steps you can take to keep your volunteers.

These are our guidelines for managing and keeping volunteers: Recruitment Schedule Work Substitutes Interests Training Procedural guidelines Thanks Safety Coordinators

Create a fixed schedule for volunteers (I know, how ironic – telling librarians to construct their professional nemesis – a fixed schedule). Publish it so other volunteers, faculty, staff, and students can see it. Put it on your website, hang it in your library, do whatever it takes to let your volunteers know that they have made a commitment and that your program depends on their punctual service. We have a hard time getting parents to commit to weekly appearances, but great success with bi-weekly assignments. So we tend to stagger our parent volunteers every other week.

We have a hard time getting parents to commit to weekly appearances, but great success with bi-weekly assignments. So we tend to stagger our parent volunteers every other week.

I am certain that I have mentioned our crazy rotating 8-day schedule at NCHS. But our students cannot keep up with volunteer commitments on a daily basis. Instead, we ask them to come 1-3 times per cycle (8 days). This seems to work better for everyone concerned.

But again, they cannot blow off their scheduled time. We have “fired” student volunteers for that. No joke. It’s a part of their agreement when they sign on and we take it seriously.

Why are we so strict? Because we schedule our own work around the volunteer schedule. Invariably, we have more to do that what we can handle. So we prioritize what HAS to be done by faculty and staff first, then delegate what volunteers can do. But when volunteers fail to show up, we fall behind on those secondary tasks. Time management is much easier when volunteers come as scheduled.

This brings us to the second most important lesson we have learned: Always have a job for volunteers when they show up. Just put yourself in their shoes. They’ve left home, negotiated traffic, back-burnered their own responsibilities, and arrived to help you and you have nothing for them? Not a good message. I can’t tell you haw many times I have failed at this. And this is yet another reason why the first rule – the schedule rule is so important. If you can anticipate their arrival, you can always have an appropriate task ready.

Bottom line is stuff happens, so the volunteer program should include a list of substitutes that volunteers can call on in case they can't make it on their scheduled day.

Let’s take a moment to thank our host, edWeb.net, and our sponsor, Follett Software Company for this chance to connect.

Tweeting?

We also survey our volunteers about what they would like to do. We offer a wide range of options. Gardening Circulation desk Cleaning Shelving Back office Special projects Displays Bindery

About putting parents and students at the circulation desk: We have to be very careful about this. I teach big kids, and let’s say a student checks out a book on parents with alcoholism or teen pregnancy or depression management. It may be for assignment, and it may not. Or what if the student checks out American Psycho by Brett Easton Ellis (yes, we’ve got that). What does a parent do with that information? What does a peer do? It can be very tricky to give volunteers access to patron records. I am not saying don’t do it. You know your school, your students, and your volunteers. Just be aware of the possible repercussions that can ensue.

So this is a beautiful segue to the next item. Train your volunteer corps. YES! This is a huge time suck! And YES! You will have to offer several training sessions because a) there is no universe in which all your volunteers can show up for training at the same time, and b) not all volunteers will perform the same tasks. So YES! It is complicated. But in the long run, it is not only worth it, but it is necessary.

Training should include basic how tos like escirculation software, OPAC searching, special checkouts – we, for instance, have special procedures for DVD checkouts, cameras, textbooks, iPads, and iPods. Special loans (overnight checkout), we occasionally release reference resources when special circumstanc call for it. Fines management is tricky (again be very careful with student volunteers and fines management). It helps if they can troubleshoot basic things like a paper jam, or explain to students how to use the copier.

It also helps if they understand the expectations from students. What is your library culture? Parent volunteers often sign on for library service because they think it will be quiet. Oftentimes, it is anything but quiet. They should know that up front. They should have some understanding of it – not that they should play any part in rule enforcement, but it helps them know when to grab a professional’s attention.

I am in the process of designing a parent volunteer website. I wanted to have it done in time for this webinar, but I don't really need it until mid September and other priorities won out. The portal will provide all the things we have discussed here – a schedule, a survey to find out what people want to do, a list of upcoming special projects, a substitute roster, a training schedule, and a list of procedural guidelines This list will outline documentation for everything covered in the training sessions. It is unreasonable to expect volunteers to remember all that is said during training. Statistically, people forget 90% or what is said in a lecture within 72 hours. Thus they need to have a resource to consult when they can’t remember procedures. This too will take time at first, but consider how it will facilitate training for years to come. It will also establish credibility to the volunteer program. It will help bring in new members, ensure that folks show up, etc.

This is what we will include in our procedural guidelines: Circulation software OPAC searching Circulating special items Unique lending Fines management Printer issues Copier How To Filing service requests (tech support) Procedures for students who cannot access the network Cataloging 101 (what is, not how to do it)

Here’s what won’t go on the website. Thank you gifts. Twice a year, we issue handwritten notes and enclose a small gift. The gifts vary – a coffee gift card, a movie ticket (AAA offers super discounts), once, we bought terra cotta pots on sale and planted spring flowers. It depends, and it’s never much. There are lots of outlets for inexpensive personalized gifts. Coffee mugs can run under $2.00 a piece. I don’t think the volunteers care about the gift per se, but they appreciate the gesture.

Since 1999, I don’t think there has been a district in the country that doesn’t have a safety team. One of the most important things to cover in the training session are: the evacuation procedures for fire drills, special evacuations, and lock downs. Rather than publish these procedures online, which leads to a slew of security issues, you can create a quick quiz or just drill your volunteer corps periodically. It is very important that they know what to do. My own staff seems utterly flummoxed every time we have a drill. It would be funny if it weren’t such a serious matter.

One last thing before we move on. It is desirable, though not always feasible to designate a volunteer coordinator. I don’t want to dwell on this too much because it requires rather unique circumstance, but I just want to put it out there.

So far, I have talked about voluntary volunteers. There is another category of volunteers – those who are assigned to you. In our district, all teachers are responsible for a “duty”. This is only a one-year-old practice at our high school in New Canaan, but you can bet when administrators were creating duties, we made sure the library was included in the list of options.

Let’s take a moment to thank our host, edWeb.net, and our sponsor, Follett Software Company for this chance to connect.

Tweeting?

I may need to explain that a bit. Our library is very busy. We don’t have a sign-in system and we have an open campus. Students come and go as they please during their unscheduled periods. We don’t have hall passes or hall monitors. This si another area in which we are a free-range school, I guess.

We have 1350 students. During any one period, we average 138 students, but those numbers are consistently higher during lunch and in the afternoon, when the custodial staff collapses all seating in the cafeteria – that’s when we host more like 150-200 students. With numbers like these it is very important to establish a visible adult presence in the library. Even adolescents with the best intentions get a little unruly when concentrated in such high numbers during unscheduled time. Developmentally, this is completely normal. Practically, it presents a library culture challenge. How do we preserve our amicable relationship with students who require reigning in?

This is where the adult presence is key. It is even better when the adults in the room have already established some level of authority. It’s not that our faculty is enforcers, it’s just that they maintain class discipline, meet with parents and issue grades. That, b nature establishes authority.

Here is the thing about teachers doing library duty. If the whole duty concept is new to them, they will resent it no matter how hard you try to make it appealing – particularly when they see how students behave when not in class.

So the challenge here is not to keep these assigned volunteers. They are scheduled to be there. We can’t assign them tasks because a duty is explicitly non-instructional – so they should be able to work on their own stuff – not ours. The challenge is to make them into allies, so that they will help your program rather than hurt it.

Get ready. I am going to generalize here. There are three categories of duty teachers in the library – think Goldilocks. The enforcer – a disciplinarian who spends the period telling kids what to do whether they need redirection or not. The bubble teacher, who sees and hears nothing and never looks up from their own work – this teacher is still better than no teacher, but only marginally so.

And of course there is the ally. While this person is undoubtedly our ally, he/she is (more importantly) the student’s ally. They enjoy kids, they interact with them, they talk to them, and they also work on their own stuff. They become a part of the library.

I am certain that you would prefer not to have a supervisory duty, but given that you do, I hope that you will find this one fairly agreeable. First, let’s start off with the fun stuff. You have access to a fully equipped desk, a computer loaded with Windows7, Office 2010 and Internet access. You also have access to a phone and both color and B&W printers. The phone is a voicemail phone (#296). You can call out, but you can’t receive external calls. You are welcome to receive calls on your mobile during your time on the library floor. We have a coffee maker, an electric teakettle and a hot/cold water dispenser. You are welcome to consume any beverage you like [within reason ;-)] on the library floor, which is why we have provided you with a handy spill-proof beverage container [we ordered NCHS Library travel mugs - $2 a piece] . You are our guest in the library. Enjoy! Lunch is always festive in the library kitchen. Please feel free to join us if your duty falls during lunch – and even if it doesn’t. We love company! The fridge is often crowded, but there is a back-up fridge in Sue and Marilyn’s office. You are welcome to store your food with us.

That first part of the letter though – the part with the computer, coffee, , lunch - is the best strategy we’ve come up with so far to turn our enforcers and bubble teachers into allies. It’s not very sophisticated, but so far it has worked pretty well. Obviously we then outline our behavioral expectations for students and explain what role they can play in keeping the library both fun and productive.

We talk about library rules, “The library is technically a place for quiet study, but you won’t find it very quiet which is generally okay to a point. You are all teachers, so you will know when we reach “the point.” Basically, we just want kids to try to get some work done while they are here so we have three rules, but there are custodial and ICT addendums so it totals five in all.” Please be seated (hard to be working when you are standing) Please have work in front of you (really does help kids be productive. Also, it’s a PR issue when bd. of ed. folks walk in and see 120 kids lounging in their multi million dollar library) Please keep the total number of students per table under seven (we are totally lax about overages so long as kids are productive and moderately quiet. This is really a measure devised to give us a reason to break up large, unruly groups of kids) No food and drinks other than colorless water (custodial) Use computers for school work only (ICT – this rules out computer games and extended, loud stays on social networking sites. YouTube, Twitter & Facebook are all permissible for school purposes, but not to be abused. You will know the difference.) We explain what to do when kids require redirection. We ask them to report technical problems when they see them. We direct them to resources to learn more about the library and our services (these resources will all be listed on the library volunteer website) And we thank them.

Our thank you program is extended to the faculty supervisors, and our duty teachers will have their own section on our volunteers website.

That wraps up our volunteer program in a nutshell. We’ve already added the link to the volunteer website to our home page. We will be fleshing it out over the next month. It will be ready to go by in time for Open House – which is where we do the bulk of our recruiting.

Ah yes! Open House. Our library is on the buildings lower level. And while kids have no trouble finding us, we are not the go to destination on Open House. Let’s face it: While rated visiting my kid’s library on such occasions as a top priority, most parents don’t.

So instead of standing around the library hoping for parents to drop in, we take a display upstairs, and plant ourselves next to the table where the Parent Faculty Association distributes the student directories – the hot ticket item of the evening. We show our online resources on an interactive SmartBoard, stam video of students talking about teaching and learning in the library and through the library program, we display our Book Club books, etc. We used to hand our brochures, but now we hand out our green brochure “I used to be a brochure.” And we set up a computer where parents can sign up to volunteer. It keeps them busy while they wait and it helps them better understand our program, and the volunteer opportunities we provide.

Here is my final caution for today: Be careful what you wish for. There is a sad truth about today’s session. And this applies to human resources as well as budget. There is a fine line between being resourceful and undermining your own relevance.

Years ago, we set up a parent fundraising program for author visits. I was told to shut it down. And I get this. The parent community already subsidizes the program through taxation, and it is sometimes politically unwise to ask for more. Central office likes to monitor that kind of activity. Major initiative like building a TV studio is worth pursuing, but we don’t want to reach out to parents too often for smaller initiatives so that they really come through for the big ones.

In the last 2 years, we – the library – has brought in an additional $30 in resources, through, awards, prizes, grants, and special subsidies. I am discovering that if we are not careful, this can hurt us in the budget process. Our budget has been consistently cut each year since the economic downturn in 2008, in spite of my vehement objections. Last June, I pleaded my case again, but this time I pointedly explained that it felt as though we were being penalized for our resourcefulness. The truth is, our budget remains consistent – it is just that we are securing the resources to make up for what the town is has eliminated. This is NOT an advisable model. We are working on fixing it.

Here’s where this fits in to today’s discussion. The same thing can happen with a strong volunteer corps. We never want to lose staff, because we’ve built a successful program. So we have to be very carful when assigning jobs to avoid assigning specialized tasks that our professionals have been trained to perform. There is a nation-wide trend of replacing clerks and even librarians with volunteers, and we have to be vigilant in ensuring that administrators and board member understand our impact on teaching and learning. If they see us as book shelvers and lenders, we will seem replaceable. I’ve covered this extensively in sessions 7 (Visibility & Advocacy), 11 (Partnering with Community), and 12 (Earning Recognition) – they are all archived at edWeb.net/Emerging Tech.

Let’s take a moment to thank our host, edWeb.net, and our sponsor, Follett Software Company for this chance to connect.

Tweeting?

edWeb.net: Using Emerging Technology to Improve Your School Library Program How to Enlist (and Keep) Volunteers: Students and Parents, and Out of the Box Ideas for "Stretched" Librarians

@mluhtala #edwebet

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Guidelines for volunteer program Recruitment Schedule Work Substitutes Interests Training Procedural guidelines Thanks Safety

@mluhtala #edwebet

NCHS volunteer jobs Gardening Circulation desk Cleaning Shelving Back office Special projects Displays Bindery

Training Circulation software OPAC searching special Special loans (overnight checkout), Fines management Troubleshooting Copier

Circulation software OPAC searching Circulating special items Unique lending Fines management Printer issues Copier How To Filing service requests (tech support) Procedures for students who cannot access the network Cataloging 101 (what is, not how to do it)

@mluhtala #edwebet

First, let’s start off with the fun stuff. You have access to a fully equipped desk, a computer loaded with Windows7, Office 2010 and Internet access. You also have access to a phone and both color and B&W printers. The phone is a voicemail phone (#296). You can call out, but you can’t receive external calls. You are welcome to receive calls on your mobile during your time on the library floor. We have a coffee maker, an electric teakettle and a hot/cold water dispenser. You are welcome to consume any beverage you like on the library floor, which is why we have provided you with a handy spill-proof beverage container. You are our guest in the library. Enjoy! Lunch is always festive in the library kitchen. Please feel free to join us if your duty falls during lunch – and even if it doesn’t. We love company! The fridge is often crowded, but there is a back-up fridge in Sue and Marilyn’s office. You are welcome to store your food with us.

I’ve always been a minimalist when it comes to rules. For my own teenager, there were three: Don’t get pregnant, don’t get arrested, and don’t die – you laugh, but collectively, they cover a lot of ground. The library is technically a place for quiet study, but you won’t find it very quiet which is generally okay to a point. You are all teachers, so you will know when we reach “the point.” Basically, we just want kids to try to get some work done while they are here so we have three rules, but there are custodial and ICT addendums so it totals five in all: Please be seated (hard to be working when you are standing) Please have work in front of you (really does help kids be productive. Also, it’s a PR issue when bd. of ed. folks walk in and see 120 kids lounging in their multi million dollar library) Please keep the total number of students per table under seven (we are totally lax about overages so long as kids are productive and moderately quiet. This is really a measure devised to give us a reason to break up large, unruly groups of kids) No food and drinks other than colorless water (custodial) Use computers for school work only (ICT – this rules out computer games and extended, loud stays on social networking sites. YouTube, Twitter & Facebook are all permissible for school purposes, but not to be abused. You will know the difference.)

$30,000!

@mluhtala #edwebet