Some of my friends and family have heard me bemoan about the
non-working parent friendly hours of my daughter’s school’s PTA. The PTA meetings, at least since my daughter
has attended her school, have always been held during the school day, often in
the morning. I learned this after
signing up for the PTA last school year and I was pretty dang hot about
it. I might have ranted on Facebook a
time or two.
This was not what my vision of how PTAs were supposed to
work. When I was in school, all PTA
meetings took place in the evening and unless my father was out of town, both
my parents attended and participated in the meetings. My mother chaired committees, volunteered
anywhere there was a need and both parents made things needed for whatever
reason.
Still, I refused to let myself be excluded from involvement
in my daughter’s school. I managed to
participate, reasonably well, in the family related activities at La
Petite. I certainly wasn’t going to back
off once E started elementary school. My
philosophy was to not let anyone keep me from being involved with the school, whether
the PTA really wanted me to or not.
By volunteering to help even if though I couldn’t attend the
meetings, I was able to meet many of the parents (mostly mothers). They did need the help and were grateful and
friendly. My husband and I tried to make
sure at least one of us was there for all family welcome events. I even came and had lunch with E, just
because. I baked, made, sewed, responded
to emails and did whatever I could to support my daughter’s teachers, school
and PTA.
It has been time well spent.
E is still at the age when it’s exciting to see a parent at school,
helping out. This won’t last forever, so
I’m working it for as long as I can.
Still, in a year and a half, between travel, meetings and
work that needed to be done, I had not been able to attend a PTA meeting, until
today. I did not have a call, meeting,
prep, travel or anything else that absolutely required me to be at my desk this
morning, so I made the choice to take an hour and attend the 8am meeting this
morning.
TOTALLY WORTH IT.
At first, I was a little disappointed, if not surprised by
the very low number in attendance (10 tops, including me and the
principal). Also, not surprisingly, it
was all women. But it was a useful
meeting. There were discussions of how
money has been spent and plans related to support of other activities and tossing
around of ideas.
As a regular attender of all sorts of meetings, I found it a
little odd there was not an introduction portion. But half-way through the school year and with
such a small group, I suppose they all already knew each other well. Through prior volunteer activities I had meet
all but one of the ladies, so even I wasn’t at a significant disadvantage.
The size of the group and my familiarity with the folks
there let me release my extrovert side and I didn’t hesitate to speak up and
actively participate in the discussion.
In fact, I seized the opportunity to make a few suggestions.
One brazen suggestion, but I HAD to ask, was that they
consider, for the sake of working parents—including me, holding at least some
of the meetings, maybe even just once a quarter, in the evenings. I pointed to myself as evidence that busy,
working parents were still very interested in participating. I mentioned it was my sheer bullheadedness
kept me from being deterred from volunteering, though I felt rather excluded by
the during work day meeting times. And I
suggested, having heard as much from other parents in my situation, always
having the meetings when working parents could not attend gave them the impression
that their involvement was not welcome or needed. I was prepared for push back. I did not get it. I got nods and got people thinking about when
and logistics for security and basically got a commitment to try that out—maybe
even for the very next meeting.
I don’t know if everyone else left the meeting thinking I
was a snot-nosed interloper, but they surely did not make me feel that way when
I was there, so this is going down as time well spent. With a little luck, more parents will able
and inclined to participate—taking on more planning roles to help keep the
regular volunteers/participants from burning out.
All this was penned to make three points.
First, it’s easy to just complain about the status quo, but
it will not change by complaining. Only
by getting involved and committing yourself can you affect the changes you wish
to see. Letting fear, pride or frustration
get in the way of the positive impact you wish to make is silliness.
Second, the answer is always “no” unless you ask. So ask. They could say “no.” They could even look at you like you have
three heads. Or they could smile and
say, “we can probably make that happen.”
Totally worth the risk.
And third, probably most important, the PTA can use and does
need your help. There is always
something you can do. Even if you cannot
get to the school during the day, ever, there are things you can do to help. If you’ve got connections to suppliers (food,
paper goods, art supplies, landscaping) with a generous side, those connections
can be invaluable. If you have technical
skills, craftman or artistic skills, those can be put to use outside of school
hours. And hour a month, can pay
dividends. We are all busy. But if you have something to offer and want
to positively impact your child’s school, let the PTA know. You can even tell them what it is you’d like
to do—I told them I could help with keeping the website up to date, if they had
content but didn’t have the time to get it posted. It’s something I can do whether I’m home or
traveling. They were thrilled. They hadn’t even thought to ask for that help
but were SO glad to have it offered.
Since then, my training has ebbed and flowed--some weeks I've managed to get in 3 or 4 runs and some only 1 or 2, some, even zero (let's don't talk about the weeks of Thanksgiving and Christmas). But in the end, thirteen months later, I am still running. Last weekend I made a fun return to racing with the Hot Chocolate 5K. Not my best run time ever but race was gorgeous and fun (separate post to come about that) and even though my pace wasn't impressive, it was in the top 3 of my division and gender and in the top half over all. So I am calling it a win. 
