DESIGNING COMMUNITY PARTNERSHIPS TO EXPAND STUDENT LEARNING A TOOLKIT

Help for working effectively with volunteers continued
Volunteers. Use these questions as a starting
place for a conversation with potential
volunteers.
• Community Partner Training Agenda. This
sample agenda can help you create a training
session for volunteers. During this training,
onboard volunteers to your customized version
of the Volunteer Code of Conduct.
• Volunteer Opportunity Sign-Up Sheet. This
simple tool will help you to establish schedules
for volunteers throughout the school day.
STEP SIX: ONBOARD YOUR COMMUNITY PARTNERS AND VOLUNTEERS
The Community Partner and Volunteer Handbook
provides community partners and volunteers with
access to useful information and knowledge about
your school, such as calendars and schedules, staff,
culture, and an overview of courses. Consider using
Google Docs to create the handbook so you can
revise and update it as necessary.
Organize a Training Session
Getting all the community partners and volunteers
into one room for a training, celebration, and
kickoff session is a great way to launch the work
together, talk about hopes and goals, build
camaraderie, and ensure everyone is on the same
page. The Training Community Partners webinar
and Community Partner Training Agenda are
useful tools to help plan this session.
Sharing Space
Navigating space (classrooms and materials)
is a common hurdle among schools that have
launched community partner and volunteer
programs. Teachers, community partners, and
volunteers should have explicit conversations
about who is responsible for classrooms and
materials and who can use them. At Jeffco
Public Schools’ Pennington Elementary School
in Wheat Ridge, Colo., the staff, community
partners, and volunteers agreed that adults
in the building were there to facilitate the
learning experience, but the space was there
for the students and education. (The adults
just “rented” it to create learning experiences.)
Pennington’s Shared Learning Space
Agreement is a useful resource to address
this issue.
STEP SEVEN: CONTINUALLY COMMUNICATE WITH ALL STAKEHOLDERS
To coach and manage relationships with
community partners and volunteers, the
community partner coordinator should meet
regularly with partner staff to address issues or
questions. These questions can be used to guide
the conversations. While these conversations will
begin between partners and the coordinator, a
successful partnership will also involve students,
teachers, and families in understanding and
assessing the value of partnership programming.
The Communication and Collaboration Growth
Chart can help coordinators assess how well they
are intentionally including all stakeholders in the
conversation. And the sample evaluation survey
and post-session meeting with community partner
questions can help you gather feedback.
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