In our experience, there are many reasons why a parent should not or cannot make a full teaching commitment. We expect parents to contribute their time in other ways if they do not teach -- including the one which I'll describe below.

Two years ago, we created a job we call "Sunday Supervisor" (an expansion of the Greeter idea) which grew out of our attempts to manage the confusion of a very vital Sunday morning program. We now recruit two Sunday Supervisors for each week since we have over 120 children in attendance every Sunday and always some newcomers. The SS tasks include: directing traffic to classrooms and/or sanctuary as appropriate, greeting any new families and helping to orient them, preparing the snacks and juice for all the classes, serving as a backup for any unexpected emergencies or disruptions in a classroom or the nursery, distributing the teachers weekly feedback and attendance sheets, and any other miscellaneous needs that arise. We have a special sash which makes them easily identifiable, and we have a user-friendly sheet of instructions which is given to them when they arrive. They are expected to remain available in the classroom areas and not slip into the service even if things get quiet for a while. We ask non-teaching parents to sign up for at least 2 weeks as Sunday Supervisor, and it has proven to be a fairly non-threatening job even for newcomers. Some people have also found it a nice way to meet others.

This does take some advance coordination, so one of our larger volunteer jobs is to be the Sunday Supervisor Scheduler! We are also actively committed to involving the whole community in working with the RE program as teachers, youth group leaders, and caregivers. If you really believe that "it takes a whole village to raise a child" then everyone should be involved. We have had particularly good success in involving our high school youth as teachers. The younger kids love this -- it works especially well with the middle-school, who are often entering that difficult-to-engage period. We always pair a teen with an experienced adult teacher (well, except for one to two well-considered circumstances!) You need to be thoughtful about who you place them with and what curricula you ask them to teach, but they can really be terrific teachers!