Register for the 2023 Virtual Literacy Volunteer Management Conference (VMC)!

Flex Time: Volunteers in a HyFlex Class
Elizabeth Bennett
HyFlex classes can be crazy-making for teachers and volunteers, but they don’t have to be! Come to this session to hear some ideas for utilizing volunteers’ skills and passion for supporting learners in these settings. There will be time for questions and sharing your own experiences and ideas.

Strategies for Optimizing Service Learning Opportunities
Jo Matson
Vietnamese Social Service of MN has been supporting service learning students from multiple colleges. The service learning program has been expanding and VSSMN has been able to accommodate students from multiple majors to provide them both opportunities to develop curriculum in their program areas as well as to experience working with a diverse community. The focus of the session will be on identifying opportunities for student service learning as well as recruiting students, who provide volunteer hours. Lessons learned from developing partnerships and recording service learning student effort will be discussed. There will be an opportunity to share best practices from other ABE sites who also provide service learning.

This Is Your School Too: Creating Welcoming Spaces for Learners, Volunteers, and Staff
Erin Cary, Kris Klas
In this session, participants will identify ways to set up inclusive, welcoming spaces at their program sites for LGBTQIA+ people (and other people traditionally marginalized by our institutions). Participants will build comfort using nonbinary pronouns and messaging LGBTQIA+ inclusion to learners and volunteers, practice repairing miscommunications around gender and sexuality, and prepare ways to speak up when they witness incidents of misgendering.

What is New (and not-so-new) in Volunteer Training
Rob Podlasek, Meghan Boyle
Come get an overview of what’s happening in volunteer training. We’ll review the Minnesota ABE training standards and the Literacy Minnesota training resources designed to help volunteers meet those standards. You’ll get a chance to ask questions and to provide feedback for future developments.

Tracking Volunteers in SiD
Jenny Schlukebier, Mary Zimmerli
We will cover the how and why of tracking volunteers in SiD. You will learn how to create volunteer records; record time; and run reports required for state reporting and your local needs.