Volunteering and Your Inner 2-Year-Old

I’ve never been good at saying no when people ask me to do something, unlike my 2-year-old, who could teach classes on it. She says “No” at least a hundred times a day. She never hesitates or fumbles for an excuse or says, “Let me get back to you on that.” She just says “No!” If that doesn’t seem to register, she repeats it with more volume and duration.

I sometimes fantasize about what it would be like to say “No!” the way my daughter does. I could even follow it up with the enormous tantrum that sometimes ensues: lying on the floor, chubby legs flailing, mouth gaping like an Edvard Munch painting. (I’ve discovered that the most effective way to stop this performance is to film it. The minute I hit the playback button, her tears evaporate. She smiles happily at the screaming demon child in the recording and says, “Cute!” (I’m sure she’ll be bringing up this parenting method in therapy 20 years from now, but it’s gotten us out of some nasty moments without both of us ending up in tears).

If I could say “No!” like my daughter does, I’m pretty sure people would stop asking me to do things. Think of all the spare time I would have… I am tempted. Because whenever somebody walks up with me with that harried, pleading look that proceeds the “Could you…?” question, my inner 2-year-old is already screaming.

But inevitably, I end up saying yes. Especially when it comes to volunteering at my son’s school. The first time I said yes was to teaching the Kindergarten music classes. Originally I actually did said no. My daughter was only a few weeks old, and I didn’t have a babysitter.

But the other two moms who had volunteered needed help. Neither of them had any background in music, and I had at least been in and out of music lessons since I was 5 (my mom insisted that my siblings and I all take piano from age 5 to age 10, after which we could choose another instrument if we wished. We all dropped the piano like a very heavy hot potato. Mom got the last laugh, though, I think, since all three of us now own either a piano or a keyboard, and I secretly enjoy my fumbling attempts to play again). I had also taught Kindermusik for a year when my son was little. Not that any of that qualified me to teach at an elementary school, but it was something.

So I said yes. Because when it comes down to it, I’m always afraid that everyone else will be better at saying no, and that no one will step forward. And even though is a great school with incredible teachers, with California currently 45th in the nation in per-student funding, parent volunteers have to perform a lot of the functions the school can’t afford to pay for. Our school has a 40-hour a year volunteer requirement per family, but most parents I know end up doing much more than that. We have parents teaching P.E., music, drama and art, planning class parties, maintaining the school directory and the class phone trees, driving on field trips, helping in the classroom, doing prep work outside of the classroom, working in the school library, organizing fundraisers, coordinating book fairs, even organizing and scheduling other parent volunteers. And since I couldn’t imagine my son going through Kindergarten without music classes, my husband rearranged his work schedule so that I could teach.

And I loved it! This is my third year teaching music, and it is one of the highlights of my week. We’ve done square dancing, the Chicken Dance, the Bunny Hop (which is exhausting!), sung rounds, played glockenspiels and drums and shakers, had the kids compose rhythm patterns and simple songs and conduct the class. Every week I find myself thinking ahead to what we’ll get to do next. It is so much fun! I have another mom who volunteers with me, so we get to bounce ideas off each other, and play off of each others’ strengths. It also helps that the classroom teacher is there to assist us in a pinch.

Other volunteer jobs have been less fun. This year, for example, I said yes to a job that involved a lot of volunteer recruitment. That meant I had to be the one with the harried, pleading look, and I could see parents quailing on the playground whenever they saw me coming. I understood. They had been asked to do so much already.

The volunteer world is a strange one. Usually your only job qualification is that you say yes (or are unable to say no). If you say yes once, you’re likely to be asked to do more. You are marked in the same way that giving to a charity or buying something from a catalog means that your mailbox will never be empty again.

There are perks, though. Volunteers are paid solely in what my boss at the library likes to call “psychic income.” It’s addictive: that exhilarating feeling you get from seeing a kid remember something that you taught them, or seeing their faces light up when they see you on the playground. I’m sure it’s the thing that keeps classroom teachers coming back to work day after day. There’s a kind of immortality that comes with it. Whenever I teach music, I think back to my own elementary school music teacher, Ms. Young, and I realize that, for better or worse, I will be a part of these kids’ childhood memories, too.

So, although I sometimes wish my son and his classmates could have a real music teacher, I’m grateful that I get to be a part of their education. And I’m grateful that we get to be members of this community of volunteers. When my son walks out of his classroom every day after school, he doesn’t just see a bunch of parents. There’s the nice mom who drove him on his field trip to the Woodside Store, the dad who taught him a new game in P.E., the mom who helped him make a bird mask in art this afternoon, the dad who read with him in the hall yesterday. They all know him by name, and he knows their names, too. What he doesn’t know is the sacrifices they have each made so that he and all of his classmates can have a full and rich educational experience, and happy memories of school to look back on.

I’m still working on how to say no. I think I’ll get there. My daughter is a very persistent teacher. But in the meantime, I’m so thankful to everyone I know who, in spite of all of their other responsibilities and complicated lives, still ignored their inner two-year-olds and said yes.

If you would like to volunteer in a local school, please contact Pacifica School Volunteers:http://www.pacificasd.org/pacificavolunteers/index.htm