As another school year begins, so do the endless “opportunities” to volunteer at your child’s school. If the idea of that giant table stretched out across the gym lined with the endless volunteer sign up sheets, makes you want to cringe and run the other way, you are not alone, my friend.
Before anyone freaks out, let me go on record and say that schools are an amazing place. They are probably THE most important institutions in our society. The wonderful people who take part in educating our children should be held in the highest esteem—I believe they have a fast pass to Heaven, but that’s just me. These wonderful people need parental involvement and support to help make our children successful. But, they don’t necessarily need all of us to sign up to chair the 439 “school events” during the year.
Volunteering is great. It’s a great way to make friends, you get to know your child’s teacher, the school staff, you feel a part of the community—all good. You can get that from volunteering for a couple of hours at any school event of your choosing. What I am talking about is the pressure we feel to sign up for multiple events, chair events, recruit other people to volunteer—it’s like a weird volunteer pyramid scheme.
You may be one of those people that absolutely LOVES to put together a walk-a-thon/auction/cake walk. If you are, fantastic! The other moms and I thank you from the bottom of our hearts. We truly appreciate all that you do to further our precious little school community, we do. We just don’t want to do it with you.
This is not to say that we are unwilling to help. We are happy to help. We will sign up for a few things here and there. We will help out with anything the teacher needs from us. We just don’t want to be a professional volunteer. We want to choose the opportunities that make sense for our life/schedule/child and be done. Why isn’t that OK?
Just Say No!
Guess what? I’m here to tell you that it is OK. It’s perfectly OK to say no to chairing the school carwash/fishing tournament/spaghetti dinner. It’s OK to say “no” with absolutely no excuse. That’s right, friends, you don’t even have to make up a good excuse—you can just say “NO.”
This may not be groundbreaking information for some of you, but for a lot of us, this ideology was hard to come by. When I first entered in to the school community I felt obligated to participate in these volunteer “opportunities.” Lots of them were great, I have friends today that I made while tying paper flowers on to bags or organizing auction items. But, at some point my perspective changed a little bit. I realized that I didn’t want to spend all of my time focused on things relating to my children; I wanted to use my limited free time to do something I wanted to do—GASP! And, if I was spending time on something for my kids, I wanted it to be that– something FOR my kids. You see, I realized a few years in that my kids don’t give a flip if I’m head of the school carnival, chairperson for box tops or on every field trip. My kids (and I’m guessing yours too) care if I make their favorite breakfast, or read with them, or take them out to dinner and talk about their day. My kids care that I’m around when they need me, not when it’s time to sell candles/wrapping paper/jelly to our family and friends.
It Takes All Kinds
So, if you love volunteering at school, I applaud you and I thank you. I think you should keep doing it because we need people like you to help keep the rest of us in line. But, I’d also ask that you don’t judge the rest of us that don’t love it. Maybe it’s not even that we don’t love it—maybe it’s we only have so much time in our day and something else is a priority right now? So, please put your sheets out and I promise people will help out, with or without your side eye.
And to those of us that want to help, but don’t want to do it like it’s our full time job, I’m here to tell you—it’s OK! It’s ok to decide that your new cross fit program is more important to you this month. It’s ok that your career just doesn’t allow for two-hour field trips in the middle of the day. If you’ve decided to watch all of Outlander from start to finish in a one week period and this precludes you from participating in the “Welcome Back Breakfast,” so be it. You don’t need any excuse. You are in charge of determining what’s deserving of your time.
Whether you are the cheerful chairwoman or the variable volunteer, I can guarantee you this—you love your children. No matter how much time you spend on campus, I’m willing to bet you appreciate and value your child’s school and the wonderful people that make it so. Let’s not judge each other on how we show our appreciation or how we show up for our kids. Let’s just be thankful that we are all showing up the best we can every day.
So friends, as the sign up sheet season approaches, I just say, look into your heart. If you’re compelled to put on the best talent show this side of the Great White Way—we support you and are here for you. If you choose to spend this school year catching up on the eleven years of back scrap booking you have to do, we’ve got your back! And, if you’re somewhere in the middle and can make it to a field trip AND be caught up on all of your reality TV, well then, you are winning life and we hold you up as an example for the rest of us. There’s room for all of us at the sign up table– Lord knows it’s long enough!