You know, our principal (who's just starting her 2nd year at our school) just mentioned to me the other day that she is SO impressed with how the PTO and our teachers work TOGETHER because we both focus on the main goal, OUR CHILDREN! she said she's never been to a school where every teacher has the children as their #1 priority.

I, myself, have never been treated with anything but kindness from our teachers and instead of interupting their classrooms, I send them notes in their mailboxes.

I see the other side all the time though . . .we have many parents who tell everyone that they volunteer for the kids and that everything they do is for the kids, BUT . ..I see a completely different side of them once it's all said and done. I've never seen so many parents (even one's on the committee, one is even a grandparent who's on the committee)act so childish about anything and everything.

We used to have a book cart that volunteers ran, TOTALLY FREE for the kids. Once a week the children were able to check out these books and the following week, they'd return them for another. Each cart was set up grade accordingly.

Well, last year, we had a challenge with students participating in the AR program and many of the older students didn't even make it to phase 1 (which is usually just one book). When our principal questioned the teachers, they mentioned that they would prefer having the books in their classrooms vs. being checked out and taking time out of their day once a week. Teachers complained that they HAD NO books in the classrooms for the students to read. So our principal disbanned the book cart and divided the books among the teachers.

Well, one parent is fighting this tooth and nail to at least keep the bookcart for the kindergartners . . .and to be honest with you, I'm a little embarrassed because she's told me the reasoning behind this . ..she wants her 3yr old in the kindergarten classroom at least one day a week????? I've kept quiet about it, I usually do because sometimes it's a lose/lose battle so why bother.

Anyway, I had another parent tell me that another parent was upset because a new program she was heading was completely different from what the principal told her it would be. This parent said to me "I told her to talk to you and have you talk to the principal because you're the only one that has a good relationship with the principal"??????? That threw me for a loop????? This parent still hasn't come to me about it but you know if she does, I'm just going to encourage her to talk to the principal herself about how she feels.

Our principal and our teachers want to work together but when the fight isn't over until you finially win, they tend to not even want to work with you in the future.

Guess what I'm trying to say is that we all have to remember, sometimes they see only the "staff" side of things and we only see the "parent" side of things. If you work together, there's always a happy medium. And as I stress to my children ALL THE TIME, it's not always WHAT you say, it's the words your use and the TONE you say it in. If you start off with a defensive tone, the teachers and staff will remember that and tag you as a "problem" parent/parent group.

I often felt last year that the teachers were at odds with the PTO...but it came most often when we tried to do something to help without consideration that they may not appreciate the way we went about it.

For example, last year it came to our attention that there was a need for someone to have some experience in dealing with dyslexia in the classroom. Though we're a private school and generally have made no bones about the fact that our curriculum was not setup to deal with resource dependent students, we do have a teacher whose job is to get students up to speed who have fallen behind for one reason or another. In the same year, we had 7 different students diagnosed with mild dyslexia. The public schools will not bear the cost of helping those students, and parents by and large could not afford private training in addition to tuition. Enter the PTO. For $1000, the resource teacher could have received that training in her spare time to help the students.

When the proposal was made to fund this training, the proverbial doo-doo hit the fan with the teachers. They didn't feel the PTO should give this money for the resource teacher to be trained when we didn't give the same amounts to each one of them.

The funding request died after two contentious battles between the parents who wanted it and the teachers who didn't want it.

I thought the teachers acted childish in the matter and still feel that way...but what I thought should have taken center stage was the needs of the children. If you use that rule of thumb when you become at odds with your teachers, everything usually will come out in the wash.

I have been blessed with a mutual respect from our teachers. As a mom of five, the teachers our family has had the pleasure knowing often joke how we take turns looking after my "crew".

One late afternoon I was finishing up my work and my daughter's fifth grade teacher was telling me about her day. Well, I then told her about the two year old wanting to give the baby a bath, the four year old making lunch, etc. We called a truce, and shared an banana split.
Often we are each others only contact to the "outside/grow-up" world, I've learned to listen and they have learned that I am there for them.

After living with teachers ALL my life, I have heard their side of it more than I like (it is the ONLY conversation at family get togethers), but I will agree with Tim. They have a LOT on their plate.

One of my friends told me that collecting money for a fundraiser usually takes 20 minutes each day. Multiple that by 5 days and however many fundraisers you have (not just PTO, but everything) and that is a LOT of class time to be taken up.

We have GREAT teacher participation for our Carnival/Fundraiser. They know we only have 1 per year, it is short in duration and then they don't have to worry about it anymore.

Even if the teacher is not collecting the money, the disruption of someone else in the classroom to do it loses valuable teaching time.

[ 08-23-2004, 12:23 PM: Message edited by: PottsvilleMom ]

I definately saw that when I became pres and tried to fix that as much as I could.

I started a supply basket in lieu of the banner for the teacher with the most parents attending for a meeting. Our principal pretty much forces them to a meeting even though they don't want to go. This got them to encourage parents to come more than usual and it made them look forward to the meeting more. I devised a program, the principal let me speak to them at a faculty meeting so I could get input. I really stress that I want this to be a help to them not a hinderence. Most of them will tell me if it is. I tried to keep them well informed on everything we were doing. Surprises are very hard on teachers with a schedule. I encouraged them to come to me with any problems they thought I could do something about, they did and together we worked on a problem.

Take each others frustrations seriously. Talk it out in an appropriate manner. Have a special meeting if you need to in order for things to get ironed out. I bet they appreciate you more than you think.

I have to agree with Tim. I have found this out the hard way, our school had a group that just belittled the teachers, meetings were about staff members, etc. There was NO love lost at all. Three years that group was disbanded(there were only 3-4 members). It has been a very long haul to get to the point that we feel we are working with the teachers not against them.Lets just say my principal told me that she never told me about the hard feelings between parents and staff because she knew I wouldn't want to run the group!I have come to realize that you will NEVER have 100% support from your staff, there will always be some that just does not want parents around.
Going into this fall I truly feel that things are better than they have been in years. One problem we have is that alot of classrooms just arent allowing volunteers in their rooms except for once or twice a year.So this year we came up with a list of volunteer opportunities, parents can see that yes they can't be in the classroom but they can volunteer in the library, art room, running club, etc. This has taken some of the bad feelings away from the classroom thing.
We also do alot for staff appreciation to acknowledge what they do. It use to bother me that they didnt have a staff rep at our monthly meetings but when i looked back I could see other areas they help us with. It could be as easy as them collecting money from fundraisers. The way my principal explains it is that as parents we feel our volunteer work is soooooooo important yet when you put it into the whole picture these people have testing guidelines that they need to meet, trying to teach our children everything we cant.Parent volunteers just doesnt look so big when up against everything else they do.Like Tim said we are all out for the same thing , but we both have different ways to reach that. Maybe you could start bridging your gap by surveying the staff and asking if there is anything you can do for them. I know that i question it alot but then I try to look at the things that they do for us and truly realize that they do support us....it's sort of like a principal/group relationship. In the whole picture we are a very small but important part! As far as being a burden/bother and how they dont seem to see your importance, here's something funny to think about. My principal came up with this GREAT volunteer list of all the volunteers school wide, she only forgot one person...me the leader of her group, site base member, room mom, etc...ha ha ha. she Will NEVER hear the end of that!

[ 08-22-2004, 09:12 AM: Message edited by: pals ]