Dear Administration….
Dear Preschool and Private School Administration,
I really appreciate how zealously you encourage community building and parental involvement. But I’m busy- really busy. I have 3 kids going in 3 different directions and my husband is frequently out of town.
So when you send me an “invitation” to mandatory events- like PTA meetings, Parent Orientations, and Back to School Nights, can you please be mindful of the fact that not everyone wants to spend 3 hours listening to various people give random speeches about nothing in particular?
After securing a babysitter for the evening, frantically making sure my children are bathed and fed, and sitting in rush-hour traffic for 45 minutes, I made the mistake of assuming that this meeting was a critically important event where important information would be conveyed in a brief and concise fashion.
After all, most of us parents are pretty busy. Between balancing our careers and families, we hardly have time for basic self care (like taking a shower) and socializing with our own friends- let alone with a group of acquaintances during a forced “community- building” event. An event which, quite frankly, makes me want to isolate myself in some dark cave and never speak to another human being. Ever again.
I find the “Hi My Name Is Jennifer” name-tag offensive and aggressively friendly, given the fact that I am a 35 year old woman- rather than a a small child at summer camp- who is perfectly capable of forming authentic connections with human beings and introducing myself to those individuals who I wish to communicate with, thank you very much.
And is it really necessary for every person on your staff to get a formal introduction, stand and bow, and receive a lengthy round of applause? I am happy to express my gratitude to the faculty and staff in the form of holiday and end of the year gifts. But at 9pm on a Thursday night, after being up since 530 am and running around like a decapitated chicken all day, the last thing I want to do is plaster on a fake smile and clap my hands like a deranged seal.
Maybe the jokes that are interwoven throughout your pointless speech would be funny if I was drunk or high, but unfortunately, I am stone-cold sober. And I am supposed to be in my comfy, frayed sweats with “JUICY” written on the ass and sprawled on my couch watching The Lost Footage of The Real Housewives of Atlanta while eating chocolate chips- not crammed into some obnoxiously bright auditorium with fluorescent lights glaring down on me and wondering if my butt looks fat to the all the people who are standing behind me. Consequently, I am feeling a bit humorless at the moment.
When all is said and done, this 3 hour “mandatory meeting” could have been condensed into a 1 paragraph email. Which would have immediately been sent to my trash folder and deleted forever.
Sincerely, Angst Mom
P.S. I am happy to co-chair the Purim Carnival and bring cookies for the bake sale!
September 17th, 2009 at 5:24 pm
Speaking of which, I’m ditching tonight’s back-to-school-night.
September 24th, 2009 at 8:30 am
While humorous, I find your article sad. Ii am a Jr. high teacher, and while I agree with you that belittling parents is not the way to go, Back to School night is extremely important. The biggest tell of how successful my students are is how involved their parents are. If you are too busy to meet your child’s teachers and see what kind of environment you child is in for 6 hours a day, what message is that sending your child in regards to its importance?
Unfortunately too many parents believe that education is just a day thing that teachers are responsible for. How can you really be involved if you have no idea where or what your child does all day. Would you allow your child to spend the night at someone’s house you never met before?
As a parent and a teacher I struggle even more because I am supper busy, like the rest of the world, and school events are often held during the day. How do I juggle being there for your child and mine as well? Funny, I do. I make it to some events for my son and my husband goes to the others. If I were single, I would definitely make it to the evening ones because taking off during the day may not be an option.
The underlining questions…what kind of message would you like to send your child about their education and how you value it. The message you send with this article is that it doesn’t fit into your oh so busy schedule…but thank goodness the Purim Carnival does!
September 28th, 2009 at 12:07 pm
I’ve worked in education but now am a stay at home mom. While I was teaching I found many parents who just didn’t have the time to attend events like this and even being single and childless at the time, I understood that meetings are lame. As a teacher, I was required to attend several a week and it sucked. The only ones I enjoyed were the ones where I sat face to face with the parents at parent teacher conferences.
Anyway, the busy parents always did things to show they were involved in their child’s education. They baked cookies and left in the lounge, they bought bagels and flavored cream cheese at Panerra and left it in the lounge, they wrote sweet letters and put them in cards and left them on my desk along with a gift certificate to the bookstore or Body Shop, or restaurants. My point is, you can be involved without actually making it to the meetings. The only thing that matters is you are there for your kids. Not your kids school, teachers, and most of all dumb meetings.
October 2nd, 2009 at 6:28 pm
Hear, hear! As a teacher who has had to do all the things you describe (feed kids, drive, wear work clothes after 5 pm) to make a mandatory appearance at parent-teacher night, I feel your pain. Yeah, they want to see the face that goes with the person standing in the front of the room with their kid for 45 minutes a day, 5 days a week, but going back in to work after coming home from work? Ugh. And Yael, let me tell ya, it’s never the parents you NEED to see who come to these events, including conferences. It’s always the straight-A, super-nice kids’ folks who come. Sheesh, can we Skype this from home and spare everyone the late night?
October 6th, 2009 at 9:21 pm
Here’s the deal for me: my daughter is in a private school, in preschool, to whom the letter was addressed. I am there with her twice a week already, make snacks, pack lunches, participate in parent education, read to the other children, etc, etc. I am not showing up at an evening meeting where the staff is self-congratulating and I get updates on the construction for the new middle school. For me, school is less important than life long learning. The school is wonderful, teachers fantastic, but I work, see my daughter part time as I am a single mom. My time is much better spent at home, with her, where learning is active and by example.
We are not talking poorly educated, disadvantaged parents and children. This was addressed to preschools and private institutions. Most likely I’ll be ditching next year’s back-to-school night, as well: )