Connecting Schools With Great Fundraising Ideas.

It’s very cool when a holiday and a seemingly random event line up to re-enforce the same important message. That happened to me yesterday in a very obvious way.

Yesterday, for the first time, I volunteered to help in first grade son’s classroom and my daughter’s kindergarten classroom. I was with my son in the morning and my daughter in the afternoon.
This has been a very hectic past couple of weeks for my family and yesterday morning was no exception. I know you’ve all had those kinds of starts to the day when nothing goes as planned and you’re always running ten minutes behind. Since I was experiencing that, I wasn’t too thrilled I had picked this day to start volunteering. If I had been wearing one of those mood rings, it would have been black as night (which if I remember correctly indicates that I am certainly not happy). The last thing I wanted to do was chase after 25 screaming little kids.

Within minutes of arriving in the first grade classroom, however, I was helping students learn their spelling words on the computer. Very quickly, the kids’ laughter, light-heartedness, and friendly demeanor wiped away my sour mood, and I forgot all about the things I could be doing elsewhere. I was totally focused on the spelling words “have”, “they”, and “and”. Two hours passed in what seemed like just a few minutes.

I had the same terrific experience in my daughter’s kindergarten class. These little boys and girls were thrilled to be coloring a cartoon turkey and writing down (with some help) all the things they were thankful for this holiday season. How could I not get swept up in the merriment when one little boy wrote that he was thankful for toilet paper? (Me too!)

It’s very easy to send your kids off to school and welcome them home each evening and not think too much about what happens minute to minute in their daily lives. Sometimes, I’ll ask my kids “So, what happened at school today?” and I’ll get a response like “nuthin’”. Usually, I’ll press a little harder than that, but many times, I’ll get distracted by another child or something else, and I won’t end up ever really knowing what happened that day in school. I try to piece it together through the clues stuffed into their backpacks with their snow pants and empty lunch box, but that’s not always a good indicator, either.

So, to spend some significant time with my children in their classroom, I got an entirely new perspective into their lives. I got to see them in an entirely different light from how I see them at home. The classroom is, after all, their work environment. It’s where they spend most of their waking hours. I feel like I got to know my kids just a bit better yesterday by spending those couple of hours with them in school.

I am very grateful for that.

I am also very grateful for both of their teachers, who spend seven hours a day with my children, which is sometimes more than I do, depending on our home schedule. I appreciated how both ladies were patient, kind, loving, fair, consistent, and giving. And truthfully, I was able to see all of those traits in action within the span of just a few minutes. Teachers really are heroes.

I also picked up an appreciation for all the parents who do give of their time to the schools. I was a few minutes early for my afternoon session, so I popped into the library for a second to look around. I noticed a woman hard at work putting a huge stack of books back onto the shelves, one at a time. It looked like a never ending, thankless task. Then, however, I noticed that this woman was wearing the same volunteer visitor tag that I was. I was floored! Here she was, helping the school out, and she wasn’t even with her kids. That was a display of real service.

The fact that I picked the week of Thanksgiving to start volunteering was a complete coincidence. However, the things I witnessed while I was there could not have struck me more profoundly and made me feel the true meaning that this holiday inspires.

Since this blog and website are geared toward people who are already volunteering or working in a school, I know I am preaching to the choir to some extent. But, on the off chance someone is reading this who has not spent time volunteering in their children’s class, I would strongly recommend the experience. I am so thankful that I gave it a shot, even when it was the last thing I wanted to do on a very hectic morning.

Happy Thanksgiving from Top School Fundraisers!

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