Appreciate Your School's Staff

With school starting up again soon (though in some places it's already begun), I want to take this opportunity to remind you to appreciate your school's staff.  Now, before you suffer the slap in the back of the head for saying, "But there's Teacher Appreciation Day for that," let me go ahead and remind you that the teachers and staff at your children's school are largely responsible for molding your child's awesome personality and habits.  Today, though, I'm focusing on the non-teaching staff of the schools.....

Appreciate Your Principal/Vice Principal:  Whether you've had a flawless school year and scarcely encountered the principal in the past or you've been in his or her office constantly, they truly do represent a big part of your school's overall experience.  You can agree or disagree with them and that's okay but remember that they have the best interests of the school at heart and they have a very difficult job.

Appreciate Your Superintendent:  I have had the opportunity to personally speak to ours and cannot compliment him enough on how well he's handled our schools.  They have a tough job to try and represent everyone while making sure that the needs of the ones that need it most are met in the best way that they can be.

Appreciate Your School Nurse:  You may roll your eyes when she calls to ask if your child can have a Tylonel but appreciate her job.  She is there for every belly ache, headache, earache but she's also there for every asthma attack, insulin shot, broken bone and more.  

Appreciate Your Office Staff:  I seriously love the office staff at all of my kids' schools.  They are so completely friendly and wonderful.  Your office staff might know you by name (like mine does) or they might be overwhelmed with the amount of people but remember that these people are doing the job of many, many people all combined into one nice, messy package.

Appreciate Your Janitorial Staff:  I cannot say this enough.  Teach your child to be respectful and clean up after themselves and teach them to always show appreciation to the janitorial staff.  They keep your child's school clean and have to deal with everything from muddy feet to vomit.  

Appreciate Your Bus Driver:  Lord, have mercy, they do a job I couldn't do.  I love kids but being on a bus with a whole slew of them moving around and being silly...yeah, I couldn't.  Appreciate their job and the stuff they put up with.

Appreciate Your Volunteers:  I cannot preach this to enough people.  Appreciate the moms, dads, grandmas, aunts, uncles, nannies or whoever else is volunteering at your child's school.  They might be doing something seemingly "simple" by reading a book to a kindergarten class but they are taking time out of THEIR day to do something awesome.  Sometimes it's as simple as making copies and sometimes it's wrangling a crew of kindergarten students.  Regardless, it's awesome.

This may not cover the whole crew but hopefully this gives you a start.  Say a big "thank you" when you register your kids.  Then continue that throughout the year.  They truly are wonderful!