The PTA at my daughter's school had their annual fundraising extravaganza this weekend. At the last minute, against my better judgment, I volunteered.
In the heady excitement following my daughter's matriculation at this school, I went to a PTA meeting. It was a strange affair. Run by a tight-knit group of women, it became clear to me that there were no long-range plans, a commitment to keeping everything running just as it has always run, and no committee structure. The women explained this system with much giggling, saying how it had always worked in the past, and how eager they were to see new parents join the PTA to help out with all this work that just kind of gets done.
I have not been to a PTA meeting since. I did not join the PTA.
I volunteered for this craptacular partly out of guilt and partly because the Angry Kid was pestering me to. I showed up early and, under the vague direction of some PTA lady, began work in the kitchen. I loaded up countless coolers with ice, sodas and Capri Suns, I dumped hotdogs into tepid water, and split a bunch of hotdog buns. I caught a few mysterious dirty looks from the PTA ladies but kept on doing things that seemed like they needed getting done. After a strange, somewhat nasty encounter over a missing box of supplies (which someone, not I, had moved out of the food preparation area), I was asked to leave the kitchen. Without even a "thank you" for the hour of work I had put in, I wandered out into the hallway and learned that I was to man the antique Whack-a-Mole game, which was placed in a remote corner of the school, as far away from the kitchen as it could possibly be.
I realized that, while the PTA was desperate for volunteers, there were certain "desirable" volunteer positions (like the kitchen) that the PTA ladies had allocated to themselves, and "undesirable" positions (like Whack-a-Mole) allocated to everyone else. Rather than do backbreaking work with snippy bitches in the oh-so-desirable kitchen, I got to play with kids and spend some quality time with the Angry Kid's teacher.
My first encounter with the PTA ladies should have clued me in: the PTA ladies never left the magical social whirl that was high school. Next year I'll make cakes for the Cake Walk and they can play by themselves.
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
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22 comments:
I think I have finally discovered the intrinsic value of a college degree. Or possibly that of a graduate degree. Whatever. The moral of the story is this: More education may, if you are lucky, lead you further and further away from the fifth fucking grade than your contemporaries who did not get more education.
Whether this is worth the crushing student debt I've accumulated is left as an exercise for the reader.
My favorite volunteering was bringing stuff and then playing with the kids. Once I volunteered for the kids splatter paint activity, cheering the kids splat efforts and hanging up the pictures on a clothes line to dry. I was covered with paint and grinning like a fool.
I've been involved with org's like that, and it has the same effect on me, too. I almost resigned from the steering committee of a local writers' conclave because of similar behavior.
And to think: because you showed them up, they invented something to get you out. Crap like that is why so many organizations that could be making a difference aren't. [sigh]
I got a long spiel from a new acquaintance at church about how you can "just tell" who the popular moms are in your kid's class and who the unpopular moms are. She, of course, has always been popular, but she is nice to those less fortunate mom's who aren't. Because she is a good person.
She's on the PTA.
There is something profoundly sad about a woman in her 40s engaging in this kind of thinking.
I see many of those people at Son's school events.
This makes me want to home school Cooper just so I don't have to deal with this kind of stuff.
Here's the thing: at our local pta organization, the mothers are largely educated, but do not have full-time jobs outside the home. They tend to look down on those mothers who DO have full-time jobs. You are exactly right about the clique nature of the organization, with one caveat: it's more like junior high than high school.
Writing as someone who wouldn't go near a hot dog under any circumstances, I think it's hilarious that kitchen duty was the *desirable* job.
my word verification was "hissent." I'm pretty sure it means: consent given while muttering a few choice words about my PhD and hot dogs.
I will point out that PTA and PITA are very, very, closely related.
I think I have finally discovered the intrinsic value of a college degree. Or possibly that of a graduate degree. I dunno, I had a professor who acted like the PTA ladies. he once required that I read a specific book which was not in the school's library and he refused to loan me his copy. (there wasn't time to get it via interlibrary loan). I had another grad student borrow his copy for me. He pulled that type of stunt on any student he disliked. He's a big name in my field and went from State School to Ivy League after I graduated. Sometimes grad school is just Junior High with longer term papers...
I actually made it a policy to ONLY work with KIDS throughout my volunteer gigs, that way I got to do hands-on living lab research for Shaping Youth, while steering clear of the uber-mom/C-level over-achievers struggling to find their self-worth post-mommy trackin'...
I volunteered every week for playground duty (which launched my documentary in dev; Body Blitz: Media, Shaping Youth) and held just about every other field trip/hands-on post with a swift "no meetings, no mamas" rule of thumb to guide my engagement.
btw, Vanessa wrote about this from the KIDS' perspective over on Radical Parenting/On Teens Today re: 'cupcake' capers and judgmental cliques.
http://tinyurl.com/r2fk3l
I pissed off not one but two activist organizations, one against the death penalty and one working on post conviction relief, because I thought there should be a strategic plan, working committees, meetings short enough to be fit into an evening after a workday + commute and still get ready to commute + work the next day, minutes, etc.
It took a *very* long time to understand that some other people there were primarily there to have fun and could have been at a recreational art class or something just as well ... I didn't get it at all because I'd done activist things before on less grisly matters, and people had worked it like a job. Finally I got it.
The other person who pissed them off didn't have a college degree, but was one of those super efficient high level corporate secretaries in a large, fast paced firm.
Quite literally, it took us years to understand what we had done to piss people off so.
P.S. Luis - I've worked in academic departments that functioned like this PTA.
I've been called "oppressive" for suggesting that meetings last an hour, agendas be established beforehand, minutes be taken and distributed ... that a working committee structure be created, and that committees have a charge, etc. etc.
Then finally I gave up hope on these types of teamwork and started my blog.
(Hmmm, I think my first and more entertaining comment, on the activist groups that were like this PTA, didn't go through. If not, I will try to recreate another day.)
You just summed up my PTA experience(s) - to a "T." To top off my PTA drama, the president and the secretary of my daughter's PTA happen to be classmates of mine from high school, and guess what: I wasn't in their clique then, and apparently, 20 years later, I'm still not. Wow.
The PTA is the place woman go who could not make as Stepford wives.
I detected this evil clique long ago and warned AP of it. I did an end run and jumped into volunteering directly into Angry Kid's class. Kids and teachers appreciate the effort while the PTA ladies snarl. Hah!
Is your PTA only women? I've found the men to be just as bad. And frankly, I've yet to be in a dept (three now) that hasn't acted just like a PTA with all the obnoxious cliques and weird requirements of individuals. It makes creating committees hard and useless since you end up with committees who cannot function because no one on them functions. I've been so depressed of late to realize that cliques in life don't go away. You can walk away from them, but they will be on the fringes of your life unless you live in an empty forest (I hear those squirrels can be really tough to get in with!)
home-school co-ops, special interest groups, and curriculum support groups end up the same way. So don't think you can evade this PTA crap by homeschooling unless you go totally unconnected. I choose to teach the kids, and leave the board meetings to someone else.
I'm really lucky: our PTA is so swamped with work that they don't have the luxury to be like that. Most of the women running it are working moms, so stay-at-home moms like me are looked down on a bit, but I keep my head down and just keep volunteering and being there when I'm needed.
I wonder if the middle school moms become like middle schoolers for their parent group . . .
It can be horrible, can't it? My son's first school was an inner city school so poor they didn't even HAVE a PTSA - the families couldn't afford the dues. But I volunteered, and the staff, faculty and parents were fantastic, and welcoming.
Then he transferred to a "better" school, for 2nd grade, and I enthusiastically joined in - only to be rebuffed, like you. It was the same kind of thing. Weird.
Then we moved to another city. The school community here was HYPER supportive, and I anticipated the same kind of jealous cliquishness I'd experienced in 2nd grade.
Astonishingly - no. Altho this was a community with many affluent parents (Hollywood types, music industry types) as well as hippies and rural people, I was welcomed and even embraced by the Cool Kids. Which felt weird, because that was totally not my high school experience. And I am still friends today with many of the parents, and our kids are now 21 years old.
Umm...not sure what my point was, only to show the diversity.
Hey, Anonymous; your experience mirrors mine except my one attempt was full of snide remarks about how superior stay-at-home moms were, with their "real values" and all. @@ I never went back.
Anonymous wrote: >>Here's the thing: at our local pta organization, the mothers are largely educated, but do not have full-time jobs outside the home. They tend to look down on those mothers who DO have full-time jobs. You are exactly right about the clique nature of the organization, with one caveat: it's more like junior high than high school...
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