BYU Service Certificate – Cherry Hill Elementary Classroom Aide Program

By: Devin Bird

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 Table of Contents

Service Proposal…………………….…………………………………………... 3

Background……………………………………………………………………… 5

Program Organization…………………………………………………………..77

Program Adaptation……………………………………………………………. 88

Program Continuation…………………………………………………………..10
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Sources……………………………………………………………………………12
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 Service Proposal

I originally started serving with the Y-Serve group Latinos Engage in Academics and

Development (LEAD) back in February 2019. At the time, I began volunteering as a classroom

aide at Canyon Crest Elementary where I had the opportunity to assist bilingual students and

teachers. This was such an amazing experience for me, and I absolutely loved every movement

of it. During my time at Canyon Crest Elementary, it became clear that teaching a group of 20

bilingual students was a tremendous task for one teacher and that classroom aide volunteers

could be of great assistance. As a result, I became more involved with LEAD as a program

director where I started up a new classroom aide program at Cherry Hill Elementary in Orem.

For the BYU Service Certification Award, I wish to propose the new classroom aide

program at Cherry Hill Elementary as my capstone project. As has been said numerous times,

there is a dilemma with the education system in which students are not learning as much as they

should. While there may be numerous reasons for a student’s failure in school, we can help

students improve academically by increasing the ratio of instructors to students in the classroom.

More one-on-one time between a student and a teacher (or tutor) can greatly enhance a student’s

performance. I believe that classroom aides at Cherry Hill Elementary can help fix this

educational problem by serving and implementing the 4 aims of BYU. Through the examples of

volunteers, I hope that the students and teachers will also develop a desire of lifelong service to

others. By assisting in the classroom, our volunteers will help the students grow intellectually

and cultivate good character. The ultimate goal of this program would be to help better prepare

students for their academic future.

Currently, we have been running the program for 1.5 semesters and it has proven to be

very successful. Essentially, BYU volunteers sign up for a time slot to volunteer each week (the

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time that is most convenient for them) and it is a semester long commitment. As such, the

volunteers will remain with the same teacher and students throughout the semester which will

allow them to develop stronger relationships with those they serve. While in the classroom, they

will assist the students and teacher with whatever subject is being studied at that time. So far,

we’ve had to be flexible in modifying certain parts of the program, but our community program

sponsor has already expressed multiple times how grateful they are for our volunteers. Overall,

the program has been very successful, and we plan to continue assisting students and teachers at

Cherry Hill Elementary for years to come.

As previously mentioned, I will use the Cherry Hill Elementary classroom aide program

as my service capstone project. Not only will this project help build the students and teachers

that we serve, but it will provide more BYU students with a meaningful service opportunity.

Additionally, this would be a great project for me personally because I get to apply what I’ve

learned in my service class (STDEV290) and also what I’ve learned from my Spanish major

classes. Not only that, but this program is very sustainable and clearly meets the community’s

need for educational support.

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 Background

LEAD first got involved

with Cherry Hill Elementary in

the winter semester of 2019.

Our previous program directors

had talked with the school’s

principal about having

volunteers assist the elementary

students, however, although there were plans to get Photo taken from Google.com (Somen, March).

program organized, it never came to fruition. When I started as the new program director for

Cherry Hill Elementary, I immediately reached out to the principal (Heather Slaymaker) to get

things going. Yet despite my eagerness to work on the program, I learned that our service group

did not have the best relationship with Cherry Hill Leadership. I felt concerned when Heather

emailed me and said that she was unsure and reluctant to let us start of up the program. She said,

“we met last year a couple times with your program contacts and there was no follow through

with getting volunteers, so I am a little hesitant” (fig.1). This was an obstacle that I did not

expect, and I felt embarrassed that some of our previous leaders had not been more diligent with

working with Cherry Hill Elementary. At that moment, I wondered if there would even be a

Cherry Hill classroom aide program in the following semester. I decided that if I wanted

everything to work out, that I would need to put in the time and build a good relationship with

the leaders at Cherry Hill Elementary.

I started off by apologizing for the way our program director(s) behaved the previous

semester and assured her that we were interested in helping the elementary students. My goal

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was to accept responsibility for our faults, fix our mistakes, and be optimistic about the future.

Around a week later, Principal Slaymaker thanked me for the email and informed me that they

could use our volunteer support. She said that for the next couple of weeks, the volunteer

program would be put on hold until they hired a new volunteer coordinator. All of this was

exciting news to me, and I was thrilled to get things going in the following weeks.

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 Fig. 1 My conversation with Heather Slaymaker, principal of Cherry Hill Elementary. I was able to gain her trust
so that we could start up the classroom aide program the following fall semester.

Program Organization

I originally thought that we would be doing a classroom aide program at Cherry Hill

Elementary like we did at Canyon Crest Elementary (meaning that volunteers help students in

every subject), however, it turned out that Cherry Hill Elementary needed help mostly with an

AmeriCorps reading program. My primary contact to get things rolling for the program was

Kristina Enciso, the director of the AmeriCorps reading program at Cherry Hill Elementary. We

originally communicated via email to discuss the needs of the program, and then met in-person

to solidify everything. It was decided that volunteers were needed at all times during the school

day to help students who had fallen behind in reading. Now that we had all the details, I needed

to organize the program so that the volunteers could start helping at the beginning of the

semester.

After reviewing the details and needs of the program, I knew that there were a variety of

things I needed to organize. First, volunteers would need to meet with me and go through a brief

orientation before they begin volunteering. During the orientation, I would discuss how to sign

up for a time to volunteer, where to go, and what they needed to do to prepare (e.g., dress code,

Y-trainings, etc.). Secondly, I had to put together a Google Sheet document listing all the

volunteers who wanted to help with the AmeriCorps reading program (fig. 2). After a volunteer

would meet with me, they would then meet with Kristina to do training before they began

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volunteering. Lastly, I needed to find a way to advertise for the program. This part was difficult,

but with time we were able to get more volunteers.

Fig. 2 AmeriCorps Reading Program Google Sheets document. This is the document that Kristina and I shared
that allowed us to coordinate which volunteers were interested in serving. It also allowed us to ensure that
each volunteer was contacted and trained.

Program Adaptation

Although I enjoyed helping run the reading program, I wanted to do more. I knew that

reading wasn’t the only subject that students struggled with, and from my experience as a

classroom aide, I knew that teachers could really benefit from having volunteers in their

classroom. In fact, one teacher named Paola even asked if our Y-Serve group could provide

volunteers to help the students and teachers in the classroom. Consequently, I felt inclined to

expand our program and I asked Principal Slaymaker if we could also have our volunteers be

classroom aides throughout the school day. Not only would this be a huge help for the teachers,

but it is also a very flexible schedule for the volunteers. With the support of Paola, Principal

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Slaymaker gave us permission to start sending classroom aides volunteers to help out at Cherry

Hill Elementary. This is when our program really started to take off and have a lot of success.

While I still continued working on the reading program, I soon found myself putting in a

lot more time with the classroom aide program. My new contact for the classroom aide program

was Kristine Thacker, the assistant principal of Cherry Hill Elementary. With time, I put together

new guidelines for being a classroom aide volunteer and created a new Google Sheet document

where students could sign up with the teacher of their choice and at the time of day that worked

best for them (fig. 3). Shortly thereafter, we started to have many students show interest in being

a classroom aide. In fact, we eventually had more BYU students serving as classroom aides than

as volunteers with the AmeriCorps reading program. By the end of the semester, we had

numerous students volunteering on a weekly basis, and when I would communicate with the

principal or assistant principal through email, they would often express to me how much their

teachers enjoyed having classroom aide volunteers. Ultimately, the teachers, students, school

leaders, and volunteers all loved what we were doing.

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 Fig. 3 Classroom Aide Google Sheets document. This is the document that the volunteers and I used. They
would sign up for a time that worked best for them. I would also verify that they completed the Y-training and
that they met with me before volunteering. There were opportunities to volunteer in English or in Spanish. The
volunteers could also choose which teacher they wanted to be with as well. The top image is meant to show
the general layout of the document and the bottom is an example of how the volunteers and I would use the
document. This document was also shared with Kristine Thacker, the assistant principal of Cherry Hill
Elementary.

Program Continuation

The first semester of the classroom aide program was a huge success. Although we had to

adapt the program and make necessary changes, we ultimately had a large number of volunteers

participating in the program and we were making a difference in the lives of the students and

teachers at Cherry Hill Elementary. It was especially rewarding to hear from the assistant

principal that the teachers enjoyed having our volunteers there (fig. 4).

Since that first successful semester, we have continued the volunteer programs at Cherry

Hill Elementary. That following semester (winter 2020), we started to see more and more BYU

students sign up to be classroom aide volunteers rather than help out with the AmeriCorps

reading program. Although I continued to refer our volunteers to the reading program as well, I

started to focus more of our efforts on the classroom aide program. Ultimately, we continued to

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have a lot of success throughout the majority of that winter semester. Unfortunately, the COVID-

19 pandemic hit us, and we had to put all of our volunteer activities on hold.

To this day (almost one year later), our volunteer programs at Cherry Hill Elementary are

still on hold, nevertheless, I have remained in contact with Heather Slaymaker to ensure that

when the time comes, we will be ready to send volunteers their way. Principal Slaymaker is still

enthusiastic about our program and is excited to continue working with us in the future. So even

though we have had to momentarily pause our service, I anticipate that the classroom aide

program at Cherry Hill Elementary will continue for years to come.

Fig. 4 The assistant principal, Kristine Thacker, mentions how she has heard “many positive comments about
our LEAD students”.

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 Works Cited
Somen, N. (March, 2019). Cherry Hill Elementary School. Retrieved from Google.com:
https://www.google.com/maps/uv?pb=!1s0x874d9a606e672f2d%3A0x723d6fc1151cd3
63!3m1!7e115!4s%2Fmaps%2Fplace%2Fcherry%2Bhill%2Belementary%2Butah%2F%40
40.2670845%2C-
111.6892463%2C3a%2C75y%2C181.47h%2C90t%2Fdata%3D*213m4*211e1*213m2*21
1scfFZEJdnSg1SqEMWSqB_sA*2
University, B. Y. (2009, February). Y-Serve. Retrieved from Twitter.com:
https://twitter.com/yserve

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