Marcus Carpenter sat at the doorway to the Columbus High School gym, chatting with a classmate as his gaze flitted from the newcomers to the pamphlet-strewn table, where his mother, Mattie Jones, stood talking with his 10th-grade algebra teacher, Amanda Taylor.
As a CHS band booster and chairman of the fundraising committee, Jones already devotes much of her free time to the school, but now she’s about to become an even more visible presence in her son’s academic life.
Jones, along with more than 200 other parents, came to the high school Thursday night for the Columbus Municipal School District’s first Parent Volunteer Fair, which featured information booths and volunteer sign-up sheets for each of the district’s seven schools as well as for community resource agencies ranging from the Greater Columbus Learning Center to the WIN Job Center.
Jones caught Carpenter mid-sentence as he tried to explain how he feels about her being on campus so much.
“(His teachers) say he’s well-behaved but loves to talk,” Jones said, as her son grinned and stared sheepishly at his tennis shoes.
It is this kind of information Jones gleans through close involvement with her son’s teachers, and she’s hoping that by signing up to volunteer in his classroom, she’ll become somewhat of a partner with them, working to ensure her son’s future success.
Thursday night, she agreed to help Taylor with paperwork.
“She said she’s going to sit me right by your desk,” she teased.
But though Carpenter mock-protested, he admitted privately that having his mother around the school encourages him to walk a straighter path. She takes schoolwork seriously, sometimes too seriously, he thinks, but his grades — mostly “As” and “Bs” — reflect her involvement.
Jones wasn’t aware of Columbus High School’s poor showing in the state department of education’s accountability rankings, which were released last week, but she feels teachers shouldn’t be held solely accountable for low test scores or discipline issues.
When parents volunteer at the schools, it motivates students, she believes, so she continues to seek ways to do more, give more.
Demon Jackson and his wife, Desiree Jackson, feel the same way. They have two daughters at Columbus Middle School — sixth-grader Taylor Jackson and seventh-grader Brittany Jackson. Their younger daughter, Asia Jackson, attends fourth grade at Sale Elementary International Studies Magnet School.
Thursday night, Desiree Jackson signed up to read to middle-schoolers, continuing a long history of volunteering in her daughters’ classrooms.
Like Jones, she feels closer to the teachers and more knowledgeable about what’s happening in the schools.
Volunteering doesn’t necessarily have to be time-consuming, said Billie Smith, principal of Fairview Elementary Aerospace and Science Magnet School.
Parents fill out a form with the hours they are available, and school officials match those times to teachers’ needs. Even small things like reading to the children or simply signing up to be a hall greeter (one of the activities on the high school’s sign-up sheet) can make a difference.
It’s as beneficial to the volunteers as it is to the students, said Starling Jones, who has volunteered with the Columbus Foster Grandparents Program for the past three years.
Four days a week, for 20 hours, he works with students in Nicole Lawrence’s fourth grade class at Cook Elementary Fine Arts Magnet School.
Right now, the program is only available at Cook because there aren’t enough senior citizen volunteers for the other schools, but Jones and program representative Mevela Andrews hope in time they will have enough people to start similar programs at other schools within the district.
“I love children,” Jones said. “I’m just trying to give back. Maybe I can have an influence on one child.”
Many parents expressed the sentiments of Kelli Rush, who said she had been thinking about volunteering but wasn’t sure how to get involved. The volunteer fair opened her eyes to the numerous ways she can lend a hand at Sale, where her daughter, Kailyn Winston, is in pre-kindergarten.
By the end of the night, both she and her friend, Lushunda Lane, had signed Sale’s volunteer list.
City Schools Superintendent Dr. Martha Liddell said she was pleased with Thursday night’s turnout and expects the volunteer fair to become an annual event.
She’s seen first-hand the way student confidence increases and discipline issues decrease when parents are more actively involved in the schools, even with something as simple as Cook’s “Welcome Wednesdays,” an initiative which invites parents to eat lunch in the cafeteria with their children once a week.
“This is just a way of opening our arms and letting (parents) know they’re welcome and we need them,” Liddell said.
And for those parents who missed the volunteer extravaganza, it’s not too late. For every parent and every schedule, there is a slot to be filled — all it takes is a phone call to the school of choice.
“We’re always looking for help, anywhere we can get it,” Sale Principal Nancy Bragg said.
Carmen K. Sisson is the former news editor at The Dispatch.
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