5) I was gently but firmly told that they don't need my help in the classroom because if DD gets to have a parent in the room, soon everybody will want one.
Soooo.... and exactly how is that an issue? Just curious... I'd have been tempted to ask the principal. My kids have always been in schools where parent participation was welcomed in the classroom at any time during the day (including being able to just drop in with no advance warning). I've helped out quite a bit in different classrooms over the years, so have a few other parents, but the vast majority of students' parents don't or want to and can't because of work schedules. I've never seen an uprising of young students refusing to do schoolwork because one student's parent is present and their own particular parent isn't there. Instead what I've more often seen is that most of the kids get excited about having any parent in the classroom and they appreciate it and it can add a little bit of motivation to the classroom as well as helping the teacher out with grunt work.
So I just find the principal's statement curious. I can guess a bit about where it's coming from - some of my friends who are teachers don't like having parents in the classroom because they think the parents are focused on the teaching, maybe questioning it or somehow making it more difficult for the teachers feel they are free to do their thing without eyes who don't understand teaching and haven't learned how to teach watching with opinions. I haven't heard them say that they don't want parents there because the parents are distracting students or because it makes all of the students want to have their parent in class.
polarbear
ps - the comment about "dd gets to have a parent in the room" - that's not really how it works usually with parent volunteers - ie, the parent isn't personaly accompanying their child and ignoring all the rest of the kids, unless that's what you were proposing, which I doubt it was! A parent in the classroom is usually shared among all the kids....
