Recruitment of Teachers and Staff

Before you begin recruiting teachers, consider your needs in terms of how many children you anticipate, and (very important!) what sort of groupings you may need to make if you are a smaller church school. There should never be less than 3 children in a class. There also (ideally) should never be more than a three year age range in any class. That said, you will want to plan for one teacher per class, and hopefully a helper, which could be a teen, or retired person who does not want the responsibility of teaching. You may want to set up a team-teaching situation if this works well and people will be more inclined to teach if they do not have total responsibility for a class. You will also want auxiliary people, who are able to do music and crafts, and others who can work on pageants, or who can write or organize well for Creative Festivals and other activities.

When you recruit teachers, be careful. You do not want to have a general cattle call for teachers, or you will (guaranteed) get one or two who simply have no business in a classroom. Start by consulting with your priest about people he thinks may be good at teaching. Of course, you want teachers who are communing members of the parish, and who have a good grasp of Orthodoxy. If you have very new converts, you will want them to get their feet wet by assisting. They should not immediately be presenting the Orthodox faith to our children- there needs to be time for them to learn it themselves!

Once you have found some teachers by this method (and they have accepted), you can certainly open the search to the general parish, but do so in a way that does not commit you to using those who respond. Have a form for people to fill out (see the sample at the end of this), which gives you some idea of what they are interested in doing in the educational program, with the clear understanding that people will be contacted as need arises. (Signing the form does not mean that the person is now a church school teacher!) When all forms are in (and do this early on, perhaps at the beginning of summer), you can look at who is interested, and what their talents are. After consulting with the priest when appropriate, you can then consider your needs, and contact those you think would work well in the church school. Don’t forget, while some may sign up who would not be good teachers, they may be excellent at organization, at maintaining supplies, or in providing snacks. When someone is good enough to volunteer, you want to use them somehow, if at all possible.
Once you have your staff in place, it goes without saying that you will then provide ongoing training for them- something covered elsewhere in the blog.









Church School Volunteer Form

We are looking for volunteers for this and coming years for our Church School. If you feel you could help us, please complete this check sheet. We will then see what our needs are this year, and you may be contacted. Even if you are not called upon immediately, needs come up all through the year, so you may hear something later!


I would like to help the Church School program by:
(circle all that apply)

teaching _________(ages?)

assisting a teacher

being a substitute

helping with crafts

helping with programs/pageants

helping organize and/or obtain supplies

provide musical expertise

provide publicity for our activities

work on budgeting/obtaining funds

Other _________________________




Name____________

Phone number __________________

E-mail address ____________________________

Comments/Suggestions: