PTA and the Working Mom

WOW! As a working mom in perfectville, you try and find a way to get involved that will take the least amount of your time. Because let's face it, you want to be involved with your kids school and meet other parents but you want to do it in a way that makes you look good. i.e. I will not be the parent dressing up as a dinosaur to read a story about dinosaurs to my kids Kindergarten class every Friday, or be the parent who comes in every Thursday to help with the special craft for the class. Who has that kind of time on their hands? Even if I were a stay at home mom, I say when they start school it is my time to discover me again! I could figure out some way to spend most of my day rather than being at my kids school for hours on end each week. (not that there is anything wrong with this, there just needs to be some sort of balance for me)
I will be the parent who gets involved with a committee with some nameless name in a sea of nameless name committees where I can show up once a month for 30 minutes spout off some enlightened commentary on the subject of the day, go home, pat myself on the back and open up a bottle of wine.
So I joined what I thought was the perfect committee that would take at the most 6 hours of my precious free time a year.
For the sake of keeping names out of my blog I will call the committee the nameless name committee that is taking up more than 6 hours a day of my time since signing on to be a volunteer.
Meet chairman of the nameless name committee, we will call her Jill. Jill is a stay at home mom with one child attending perfectville elementary school and like me was new to perfectville. She moved from a west coast state where she was an executive at a very popular company. She is a lovely lovely woman, who clearly had a very important position within her company and now uses her experience to run the nameless name committee and to be a dedicated mother of one in perfectville. I admire her very much, she is one of the best moms I've ever met.
She has gathered each of the volunteer moms for a meeting to discuss in which direction we would like to see the nameless name committee head in 2008.
I thought I was there to have a cup of coffee and dish with the ladies, but our committee head Jill had another idea.
I walked in to this beautiful home, and was sent to the kitchen table to begin the meeting. We spent the first 10 mins doing what I anticipated, drinking coffee and dishing about our wonderful offspring. And then the white board was introduced. Clearly a prop from her executive days.
On the white board we had an agenda listed with time frames for each discussion point, we were each encouraged to take on a task within the committee, we were given a deadline (less than a week) to come up with a final draft of something that was going to be reviewed, critiqued and approved by the BOD of the PTA, and distributed to the school.
What happened to my 30 minutes a month?
I have to hand it to Jill, she is a doer. We all took an assignment, she followed her agenda and dismissed us after our hour of 'socializing' was over! WOW. I could not believe this was my life on the nameless committee in a sea of committees. Why didn't I just choose to be the room parent where it may take up an hour of each day, but you know that going in, and let's face it, the room parent gets all the glory!
I have to say we pulled it off with the style, grace and professionalism of 8 stay at home moms who all had extremely responsible positions prior to staying home with their kids and one working mom who is barely making it with a somewhat professional position and a family to raise in perfectville.