It never quite works out evenly in co-op-ing, the same folks teach session after session. I don’t actually have a problem with that, some folks are more outgoing than others, teaching a group takes a different skill set than tutoring your own kids does, and gifts vary. I do have a problem though if the teaching members are overburdened.
Sometimes (especially in a co-op that is just growing from small and improvisational to medium and chaotic) the cheerful volunteers get in a place where they are actually looked down on. How can this be?
If you are very much in the “everyone will supervise their own children,” mode, but some people have to carry books, charts, craft supplies AND a toddler out of their car, then their other children will not be very well supervised. If they are organizing a classroom and beginning to organize their students who are arriving early, then their own children may feel left out, get into scrapes, start fussing, even hit someone. It is very easy in that setting for the parents actively watching their own children to look down on the parents who are distractedly setting up a classroom.
Then there attitudes – why are we looking like a school? We are homeschoolers, I thought we were avoiding all that. And expectations, the looser a homeschool is run, the more structured they may hope the co-op is, and the more school at home-y the homeschool, the more like a birthday party they may wish co-op to be.
I wish I could say we’d found homeschooly ways of evening this all out – but we look a lot like a VBS. Some aspects of children-in-a-herd are the same whether you homeschool them or not – especially if you need to have 2 adults in any room for insurance purposes. But here are some things we do or have done in the past:
-A co-op member might be really good at shopping – teachers who hate to shop could send her a shopping list at the beginning of the session and not have to bother with that.
-Collect dues at the beginning of the session, so all the teachers may be re-embursed for their classroom supplies. They are already staying up late preparing ‘extra’ lessons, they should not have to pocket the expense also.
-Remind the teachers to seek re-embursment, some ladies just won’t, or don’t, realize that is what the dues are for.
-Have families whose parent’s are NOT teaching in charge of announcements, clean up, set up, nursery, minding the children during set up so their parents can focus on there teacher job, and do the treasury and library if you have one. Probably some of your teachers will do some of those jobs too, but try to give the non-teachers more chores.
And control when and how new students are added: You really do not want to be in the place where a new class has been added for high schoolers; which dumps all of their younger siblings into your mathematics exploration class on the day that your helper stays home, you son’s molar comes out bloodily causing loud cries, you run out of supplies for the students, you have 18 kids crowded in a room intended for 10, the nursery worker goes home early handing your your 18 month old, and you have a headache. Especially if someone decides to give you motherly advise that day about how to treat your children with more empathy.
Ask me how I know this.