I certainly had no heartburn about doing some "busy work" out of the classroom--better me doing it than the teacher, certainly!
But my point was that she seemed to choose the work she did in order to keep parents out of the room. (And I'm not just paranoid. It was one of the big complaints that other parents had about her, too. She was unusual in the amount of time her volunteers spent out of the classroom.)
In fact, the only time that parents spent with the kids at all was during library time...when she wasn't there! I honestly think she just *really* hated to have people see her working.
She's just one case, and a bad enough case that it drove us out of the schools at that. But it was my experience, FWIW.
