Learning lessons the hard way: My humbling P&C journey

This story starts from a place of deep regret.

When my daughters were in primary school, I was an active member of the P&C. I was fortunate to have both the time and availability and genuinely enjoyed organising events. One year early in my career as a ‘school mum,’ I signed up to help organise a Carols by Candlelight. It sounded simple enough: get the kids to sing some songs, sell some snacks, and hold a raffle.

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The school always had some sort of end-of-year event, but it had been some time since it had a Carols night. The P&C had recently had a big turnover of members, with the majority of parents leaving the school as their children graduated and the newbies, like myself, with children in the early years taking over.

There were no handover documents, and since no one on the committee remembered the school running Carols By Candlelight, we enthusiastically adlibbed our way through the planning.

Our first mistake was not speaking with the teachers directly and individually from the moment the P&C made the decision to hold the event. We relied on the usual channels of senior committee members communicating with senior admin to pass on to teachers.

We were expecting each class to sing a carol on the night. More specifically, we were expecting each teacher to teach their class a carol.

Just part of my long list of oversights and lessons I learned that year was not asking to attend a staff meeting to talk to teachers, not actually asking teachers if they wanted to be involved, not considering the fact that the Carols Night was out-of-hours and would require teachers to return to work (or stay for extra hours).

You can see why this story comes from a place of shame.

We did some things right. We had selected a list of Christmas Carols and less traditional festive songs that we thought would be easy to teach. After all, we were parents of young kids and we knew the talents (or not) of our children.

We asked some Year 6s to take the list around to classes and ask the teachers to pick a song. Naturally, the year 6s started with their own classes and worked their way down. By the time they reached the Kindy and Pre-Primary classes, the songs left on the list were the more difficult ones no one else wanted.

Yet another error was leaving too long between the initial notification of the event and touching base with teachers, and by the time members of the P&C visited teachers they were experiencing a range of emotions from benign ignorance to confusion to blind rage.

A few teachers had embraced the idea wholeheartedly and had organised music and costumes and dancing. Others didn’t seem to be aware they were meant to teach their classes the song.

The P&C had been charging away behind the scenes, making playlists and getting donations for the raffle hampers and putting together little bags with glow sticks and Christmas stickers and other treats for the kids. We had a stage. We organised a PA system. We had food stalls. We marched around the school grounds in the evenings to determine which were the best shady spots in the early summer evening.

But the teachers weren’t on board. We had failed in our mission to communicate with the teachers.

All this seems painfully obvious now, and probably painfully familiar to many readers. It’s embarrassing to write.

That year, I learned some important lessons about being part of a P&C committee. In some states, they’re not P&C (Parents and Community) but PTO (Parent Teacher Organisation), which I think is an important distinction.

While no one wants to add to teachers’ workloads and no one should ever compel them to be part of the Parent organisation, there are some universal truths we all need to remember.

Teachers know things
The average teacher has been around longer than the average parent. At each school, there are probably teachers who have been there for decades, and they possess something incredibly valuable: an institutional memory. They will remember events that took place in the past, what worked and what didn’t. While these individuals shouldn’t be made to be part of the committee, they should be canvassed and their opinions sought.

Teachers need to know
While we were well-meaning in our efforts to not add to the workload for teachers by bothering them constantly about the organising of the Carols Night, we went too far the other way. Teachers need to know what is happening behind the scenes, but more importantly, what is expected of them should be very clearly articulated. You know that old chestnut about making assumptions turning members of the P&C into asses. That was me.

Find out what teachers love
It’s not rocket science, but when someone is passionate about something, they’re more likely to share that passion with others. Enthusiasm is infectious. In the case of teachers, they will share that passion with their students.

And while children are often surprised when they see their teacher out of school, wearing ‘civvies’ or doing something ‘normal’ like shopping, parents may also forget that teachers have a rich life outside of school hours: hobbies, passions, causes. Remind P&Cs that speaking to teachers might open up a wealth of ideas and options for events and fundraisers they hadn’t even considered.

In the end, the Carols Night was a huge success. The universe obviously forgave me my flaws and between myself, my mother and my mother-in-law we ended up winning four of the six raffle hampers (I gave two back).

But the lessons I learned stayed with me.