Using Student Jobs in the Classroom

Have you incorporated student jobs to help in the classroom? If you haven’t, you should. Student jobs in the classrom offer so many benefits for both students and teachers. This is often a topic or idea that gets “put on the back burner” for some teachers as they trudge through the other MANY DEMANDS on their time. But this shouldn’t be so….Let me explain why…..

Student Jobs in the classroom

teacher benefits

The benefits for teachers is that it helps you stay organized; it helps keep the room straightened. And it takes away some of the chores you, as the teacher would (most likely) have to tackle. It may take a good part of your first year to figure out what items can be assigned to students, and what is better left for adults to handle. But it is much better to jump in and begin to figure this out than to wait and try to do everything yourself. THAT WILL LEAD TO BURNOUT!

For those of you new or beginning teachers who are still figuring out things I have a FREE list of 101 Teacher Tips to help you out. Just complete the form below and I will zip the PDF over to your email. Easy-peasy!!

student benefits

There are just as many benefits for students (if not more) as there are for teachers. Students learn responsibility when they are assigned a job. They (often) take better care to be neat if they know they are responsible for cleaning up afterwards. They come to realize that the classroom belongs to them all and they need to all contribute to making it nice.

For some students, unfortunately, this is their first introduction to “helping out” since they come from households that have not assigned chores to the children. This makes these jobs even more important for these students since they need to learn how to take care of things, and how to clean up and contribute to the class.

I have another article that discusses student jobs, and also gives new teachers some survival tips. It also has good tips for all teachers. You can read it here. 12 Reliable Survival Tips for First-Year Teachers

Jobs for Elementary classrooms

In the elementary classroom, jobs need to be a bit more structured than in middle school and high school, especially the younger the student. For all elementary grade levels, you need to explicitly teach how to do each job that is going to be on the job chart. Discuss the correct way to do the job, and the incorrect way (and why it is incorrect), your expectations for how often they are to do the job, how the area should look when they are finished doing the job.

The best way to introduce class jobs in Kindergarten and First Grade is to teach one per day. Don’t try to teach them all at the same time. Then review the steps for each job a few times a week for the first month.

I know this sounds like a little TOO MUCH DETAIL, but (in my opinion) the more detail the better….especially in Elementary School. Here are some ideas for jobs that elementary students can help out with or do. You don’t need to use all of them, pick and choose which work for you. And as I mentioned above, try them out and adjust. Delete the ones that aren’t working with your group, add others…there is no right or wrong with this concept.

line leader
floor monitor
class library
pencil monitor
paper passer
office monitor
supply monitor
teacher’s helper
book passer
technology monitor

I am sure there are more that teachers may have discovered, but these were the ones I used.

Jobs in Middle & High schools

It’s a bit trickier to get middle and high school students to help with jobs. First of all, you have them for a much shorter period of time. They may complain that the other class made the mess and why do they have to now clean it up.

So, the best way seems to be to assign a group of students a responsibility (not listed as a job). For example team two sits closest to the iPad storage so they are responsible for collecting them from other students and making sure they are all plugged in again at the end of class. Another example is to ask students who tend to always arrive early to class (if they are agreeable) to be responsible for a simple task.

Some examples of tasks that can easily be assigned in middle school are:

collate and staple papers
listing homework on the board
handing out materials
sharpening pencils
changing bulletin boards
cleaning the room
handing out and collecting technology

You can also have some ongoing jobs. In middle and high school certain students like to be involved and help out more than others. You can use these types students to be responsible for “ongoing jobs.” The ongoing jobs that I am referring to are: class secretary, class librarian, IT team, and “substitute teacher” helper.

If you’d like more information from an experienced middle school teacher, here is a link to an article from Teach 4 the Heart: How to Delegate Responsibility with Meaningful Classroom Jobs

The main GIST of this idea is to GET STUDENTS TO HELP OUT!! When you do this, it is truly a WIN-WIN since you get help and students learn responsibility and gain confidence and satisfaction from contributing.

Until Next Time,