CLASS ACT DADS: Fathers figure more than ever into Aurora classrooms as volunteers

AURORA | On the preschool playground at Vista PEAK P-8 Exploratory, Wes Nieto was easy to spot on a recent sunny morning. Decked out in a white T-shirt emblazoned with a cartoon dog, Nieto helped a couple preschoolers stack blocks and a few others toss a miniature basketball into a hoop before hustling to his next task.

“Time goes by fast,” he said as he kissed his 4-year-old son Trevor and made his way to a kindergarten art class.

Nieto is part of a growing group of dads logging hundreds of volunteer hours at Vista PEAK.

Last year, volunteers at the school in northeast Aurora chipped in more than 700 hours with tasks such as helping teachers in the classroom, keeping an eye on recess and serving lunch.

The lone downside: Men contributed just 38 of those hours over the entire school year.

“That is a significant part of the family and we want men to be present in the building,” said Tyler Hettich, the school’s community cooperation liaison. “It’s mostly female teachers, mostly female staff, and we wanted those positive male role models.”

This year, Vista PEAK expects a troop of more than 100 dads to volunteer in excess of 1,000 hours at the school.

Hettich credits a new initiative at the school called Watch D.O.G.S., a national program that stands for Dads of Great Students, with helping spur the spike in dad volunteers. The program was created by the National Center for Fathering, a nonprofit created 25 years ago, and has spread to more than 4,000 schools in 46 states, according to the foundation.

So far, about 100 dads, grandfathers and other father figures have signed up to volunteer or have already volunteered a day at the school. Hettich — who has a son and daughter at the school and started as a volunteer there a few years ago — said that by the end of the year, he expects the Watch D.O.G.S. will have logged more than 1,000 hours at the school.

Once the dads pass their background checks and finish an in-depth orientation session, Hettich said they are assigned to a full day of volunteering. The day starts at 7:45 a.m. when the dads help students off the bus, and throughout the day they assist at lunch and recess, spend a few periods in the classroom, patrol the halls and school perimeter before helping students get back on the bus at the end of the day.

Hettich said the dads get to spend one period each day in their own child’s classroom, too, a perk the dads are particularly fond of.

Melanie Moreno, the school’s principal, said the structure of the Watch D.O.G.S. program has made it easier for dads to take the leap and volunteer. The formal nature of the program has proven a far better recruitment tool than school staff just asking dads to chip in, she said.

“It gives them a platform, a way to feel more safe about doing it,” she said.

Plus, the dads know when they get there the staff will give them plenty of work to stay busy.

“It makes them feel very included and important because we put them in actual roles when they’re here,” she said.

For Nieto, who works as a firefighter and has two students at the school, volunteering has helped him get a better understanding of his kids’ school.

“It helps me if they have a problem or an issue, hopefully I can relate to that,” he said.

Plus, he knows the teacher better now than before.

Hettich said one of the perks of the program is that once dads volunteer for a Watch D.O.G.S. shift, they become more active elsewhere in the school. As he and Nieto walked to the art class last week, he pointed out several other Watch D.O.G.S. lining up with students headed on a field trip.

“Once they get a feel for the building we have so many more participating in other volunteering,” he said.