Arrowhead Elementary Visitor and Volunteer Guidelines
2011-12
Our mission at Arrowhead Elementary is to provide daily rigorous academic instruction within a school climate that is physically and emotionally safe for every child, creating a learning environment where each child is able to achieve his or her full potential. We consider our parent community as partners in our mission to provide focused academic instruction each day. To that end, we offer the following guidelines for visiting and volunteering:
Visiting the School:
§ Please enter through the Arrowhead front door. The office staff will buzz you in to the school lobby; if they do not immediately recognize you, they will ask which child or teacher you are coming to see. (This entry system has been installed in elementary buildings across Cherry Creek to increase school security. Please know that it is designed to keep children safe, not to keep our parents from coming to school!)
§ For school safety, visitors need to sign in at the front office with name, time of day, and location to be visited, and take a dated visitor badge, wearing it clearly when in the building.
§ Please visit the location, (classroom, lunchroom, gym, etc.), stated on the sign in sheet.
§ Please sign out at the front office when leaving so that we are able to account for who is in the building at any given time. This is especially important in case of fire or tornado drills.
§ If you would like to visit your child’s class, please make arrangements with the classroom teacher, in accordance with the grade level expectations for classroom visits.
§ In the case of an unscheduled visit with a teacher or class, the office staff will call the teacher to check on his/her availability for a visit to the classroom.
Volunteering in the Classroom:
§ Classroom volunteers support teachers with tutoring, reading with students, project support, and other classroom support tasks at the teacher’s discretion.
§ Please arrange a regular time with the teacher for volunteer support, setting a day and duration of time that is at the teacher’s discretion to meet his/her classroom support needs.
§ Respectfully, we ask that volunteers avoid unscheduled visits, or visits for purely social purposes, in order to support the ongoing, uninterrupted instruction within the classroom. (Exceptions to this guideline would be holiday parties or special classroom events.)
§ Respectfully, we also ask that volunteers visit only the classroom in which they have an arranged time to volunteer since other classrooms are also amidst instruction, and need to be free of unscheduled interruptions.
§ Safety Note: For safety and liability purposes, parent volunteers may not work with the upkeep or changing of the building facility, (e.g. mounting ladders to clean windows, shoveling of sidewalks, or altering settings on facility equipment.)
If You Have a Curriculum or Instructional Question:
§ Contact the appropriate teacher via email or voice mail to schedule an appointment.
§ Please schedule a meeting with a teacher at a time that will work well for both of you.
§ If you need further assistance or information after contacting the teacher, please feel free to call or e-mail Ms. Shriver.
Checking Your Child Out of School During the School Day.
§ Go to the main office and inform the secretary that you are there to sign your child out of school.
§ Sign out in the “Sign Out” notebook, indicating the date and time.
§ Please wait at the office while your child is called down to meet you.
Mutual Respect for Staff and Parents.
§ It is important that we, as adults, model the mutual respect that we teach to children each day at home and school.
§ Therefore, even when discussing issues or concerns, staff and parents must speak to each other with dignity and respect, as we all wish to be treated.
Thank you in advance for supporting the Arrowhead staff and students by following these Visitor/Volunteer Guidelines in order to partner with us in our mission to provide focused, academic instruction each day for the children we share!