Appreciate Your PTSA

I am just as guilty as the next mom of rolling my eyes when confronted by particular members of my PTSA.  I've posted before about the annoying PTA moms.  You know who you are and you're proud of it.  You actually take great pleasure in guilting the single parents who can't make it to your meetings.  You take great joy in belittling the working parents that are just too exhausted to make it there.  You feel as if you're better than everyone else because you make it to each and every meeting, event and party.  You're a better parent, right?  No.  You're giving a bad name to REAL PTSA moms that are judgmental asses.  You're the bad apple that gives a bad name to the whole tree.  So today, I'm not going to focus the majority of my post on the rotten fruit.  I'm going to focus it on the hundreds of good apples out there.

With that ugliness out of the way, we should be thankful for our PTSA.  I know, I know, I'm dodging the rotten tomatoes of those that have the aforementioned butthead PTA parents at their school.  Hang in there, they aren't all like that.  We should be taking a look at the good PTA parents.  Moms, dads, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and more that are focused on making the school a better place.  We should be taking a look at the teachers that work all day and then make time to come to the meetings and make their voices heard because they, too, care and want their schools to succeed.  We should be looking at the the community members that are trying to contribute to making our school an amazing place.  These are the people we should be thankful for.

Maybe you don't know what the PTSA at the majority of schools does.  Let me give you a brief list of what it can include: dinners for teachers during conferences, school dances, pep club for sports events, spaghetti dinners, donuts for dads, muffins for moms, science fairs, talent shows, funding for teachers to have new equipment and/or necessary supplies, funding for kids that can't afford to do special events, and more.  There are so many arms attached to the PTSA octopus that we don't even see.  We don't necessarily realize that it's as important as it is.  The PTSA is our school's voice.  It's the way that our community can speak out to better the next generation.

For every aggravating PTSA parent, there are 20 great ones that just want you to be involved.  Some are better than others at knowing how to make that happen.  Be patient with the new ones because they're doing the best they can and better than most of it could hope to.  The seasoned ones know exactly how to promote growth. They know what the needs of the parents are and how to boost volunteerism within the community.  They spend countless hours of their own time working on PTSA events.  They spend hours on the phone trying to arrange volunteers.  They spend hours in their garage building props for the book fair.  They spend hours cleaning up afterwards when the parents who volunteer forget and don't show up.  They know what they need to do and they learn what they don't know.  They are the champions of our schools' needs.

So take a moment and join your local PTSA for your school.  If you can attend the meetings, try to.  If you can't, try to keep up to date on what's going on.  Shake the hand of the people that are fighting to make your school a better place and know that they are a great asset to your children's school experience.