If you're a teacher, do the PTA annoy you?

[RunAlexRun]

I have been into my DCs school this morning to help with a craft event organised by the PTA. I am not a PTA member but help out occasionally at things like sports day if I'm not working.

I, and the other volunteer parents, have spent the whole morning being spoken to like shit by teachers! Not all the teachers, I hasten to add, but some of them.

I was told by the PTA chairwoman to go to X classroom and that the teacher was expecting me. When I got there I knocked and entered the classroom only to be shouted at and told to wait in the corridor, and made to wait there for 20 minutes.

There were various other incidents over the morning where us volunteers were spoken to badly. If you are a teacher or work in a school, do PTA helpers annoy you? Would you prefer there was no PTA? My child is year 5 so not too long left at the school and I certainly won't be helping out again!

Our school's staff are really supportive of our current PTA committee. They are hardworking, give up their free time and are really conscientious.

The previous PTA committee however... they just wanted to save the money up so they could say 'Look how much we've got!'. Every single teacher request was turned down. Teachers asked for a list of what would be acceptable to ask for... nothing. To be fair, they also worked hard and gave up their free time, but they were a tiny, impenetrable clique.

We have 1 teacher who is also a parent on our PTA and one recently retired teacher. We are very very careful not to ask teachers to do anything, although sometimes they volunteer
I think because they can apply to us for a specific amount of money each year group it is very clear what we do and they are generally pretty grateful and relations are good. I think The Head is key though

God I am so glad my kids are at the school they’re at. The pta are lovely, the teachers are lovely. Time is willingly given up for various events by pta and teachers and if we can’t do something we re arrange or do something different. There’s a reall community feel at our school and everyone contributes.
I’d be gobsmacked if I was ever shouted at by a teacher.

Yes they are often annoying and can interfere with the core business (education!).

That said I would expect to be disciplined if I was ever rude to a member of the PTA at work. Also I try not to be rude to anyone as a general rule..

This is an eye-opener for me (a parent). I've always felt a bit guilty about not even attempting to join our PTA but it's a revelation to read here that teachers can find some members so annoying - I thought I was alone in that!

Our PTA is run by a pushy, vocal cabal who make a lot of noise about wanting other parents to join but the reality is very different. I've spoken with several mums who have said they attempted to join but were frozen out, looked down upon and made to feel unwelcome. My DC attend a very diverse school in London but the PTA is completly dominated by a certain type of parent who set up events that exclude others and as such it is completely unrepresentative of the student body. For example meetings and gatherings are often held in a local pub which means many parents at our school who do not frequent places selling alcohol cannot attend.

I always give money, donate items and buy tickets for events even if I'm not sure my DC can attend because I do appreciate the work and effort they put in. I just think it's a shame their behaviour is so exclusionary.

thestral that’s a brilliant idea
I will propose it at the next PTA meeting!
I think not annoying teachers is a very good reason to try and have at least one on The committee. We have 1 who is also a parent, plus a retired teacher. They are both very good at saying “ no, you cant do that it will piss off The Staff” and I promise we DO listen

Our pta is 80% that parent and 20% normal.

It’s that type of parent that stops the rest of us getting involved, they think they are something special as they go into school a lot in their little group but they just annoy the teachers and other parents. I throw money at it and avoid likely works out cheaper for me.

The normal parents however do an amazing job of fund raising and have done for many many year with the queen bees coming and going trying to take the credit.

It's not acceptable to speak in a rude manner to school visitors.Being generous, perhaps the teacher mentioned in the OP had been dealing with a particularly difficult classroom situation and was more abrupt than she or he should have been. Perhaps the teacher had been told that the volunteers would arrive at X time, and needed to finish a particular lesson before beginning the craft activity, and should have explained that better than they did.

We're fortunate to have a PTA with members who are well-organised and put the best interests of the children first; many of them support the school at other events and trips which need parent helpers. We're very grateful for that, we try to support the activities as much as possible, and we show our appreciation as best we can.

It's a bit unfair to criticise teachers for failing to whoop with joy at the prospect of giving up a Saturday for the school fair/disco/ other PTA event. Teachers generally have no influence over the dates on which events are held, and the events are often held at a busy time of year- summer fairs, for example, generally coincide with the end-of-year data analysis and report-writing which teachers have to fit into their own time, alongside the usual lesson planning, preparation and marking. And not all teachers have partners/ other family members who can look after their own children/ take their children to sports / activities while they go into work for 6 hours on a Saturday.

It's not usually a one-off in terms of extra hours either- those organising the school fair may have seen that Mrs Bloggs from year 6 only turned up for 3 hours to help on the cake stall. They won't have seen Mrs Bloggs arriving at 7 am each morning that week to ensure that arrangements for SATS are in place, with rooms set up according to regulations and enough staffing in place. They won't have seen the teachers who took a residential visit that week, and spent most of each night dealing with children who were ill or homesick. They won't see that the teachers then have to spend the Saturday evening after the fair, plus the Sunday, analysing data, writing a report for the head, and producing action plans for the children who are not on track. They won't see the teachers spending the next week teaching with evenings spent planning, marking, and in staff meetings, followed by a weekend of writing reports, followed by a week of teaching/ marking/ planning/ parents evenings... and so it goes on.

It's not that teachers are ungrateful, it's more the case that fundraising events are among the hundreds of work-related requirements that teachers are trying to squeeze into their unpaid time. That's never an excuse to be rude to the PTA, of course, but it might explain why teachers are not necessarily the workshy fops that some people have implied they are.

This year I sent in an envelope with €100 and a note saying that I was contributing to various PTA events that I (would rather stab myself in the eyes than attend) wouldn’t be able to commit to.

This was on top of uniforms, books, stationary, and school bills which amounted to about €350 per child. (Ireland)

Not including various trips, book fairs etc.

I’d still rather give the €100 than sit at any PTA event.

I really wish our school had some kind of online thing that we could pay into!

We have some who are fantastic, helpful and co-operative.

Then we have the do-goody nothing else to do uber-mummies who do it (almost openly) to arselick and give their offspring a leg up the greasy pole of education.

I imagine every school is the same.

You can't tar everyone with the same brush, but the ubers do make everyone roll their eyes and laugh tbh. Why did they just not become teachers? They seem to know more about it than the rest of us.

Inertia I understand absolutely all of that.

What caused the problem was the attitude of the staff, who seemed to think that only they were ever busy, and our efforts were the mere indulgence of women trying desperately to fill their empty days.

Also - you've inferred the '6 hours' thing all by yourself. And that there was an insinuation that teachers are workshy.

My issue was their holier than thou attitude, and the assumptions they made about others.

Anyone who has ever been part of a thread about teaching will be oh so aware that teachers are specially busy, busier than anyone else in fact ever. This thread is no exception.

I am the Chair of our PTA (and hopefully work completely opposite to some of the people described above!).

We are lucky in that our School has a very supportive Head and SLT - largely, I think, because they want to try to get more Parents involved with the School generally. As such we are very fortunate that we have a lot of support from Teaching Staff for our Events (which we are incredibly grateful for and always make sure we show our appreciation to them). Our Head sits in on the meetings and a lot of teaching / School staff approach us with ideas that maybe they've seen at other Schools or Scouts etc.

That said, we are very careful not to make assumptions that staff are always going to help or take that help for granted. We never run anything during School hours, and always ensure that any meetings we have are as flexible as possible (and we have a Facebook page that parents can dip into so everyone feels included, whether they can physically attend meetings or not).

I would be mortified if I felt that my DC were given any benefit from me choosing to do what I do by the School, or if other Parents saw me as a Queen Bee . The teachers are there to do their jobs, I only fanny about really with colouring and film afternoons - I think keeping those boundaries are really important.

I'm on the PTA of our secondary school. Pretty much the only thing expected of teachers is that they submit bids if they want the PTA to fund something.
So much more civilised than Primary.

Estrella the 6 hours wasn't inferred from your comments- in some schools the expectation is that teachers will attend the whole event, including setup/ clearing up. ( And it's not as easy as saying it's optional, when in some cases the 'contribution to the wider school community' element of meeting teacher standards for performance management includes a judgment on things like this).

And nobody's saying that teachers are busier than anyone else, or the only people who ever work unpaid hours. In many jobs, people are asked to do extra work on the basis that it's just a couple of hours by someone who doesn't have oversight of all the other extra unpaid jobs they also need to fit in. And it's the same for teachers, who get multiple requests to do things for one or two hours, once a year, but which all add up (not just PTA requests!)

If staff at the school you're referring to were rude and dismissive towards you, then that's unacceptable. But it's really not outrageous for them to not want to have the school fair on a Saturday.

I used to help out with the PTA when my kids were at primary school (they’re at secondary now and not PTA).

A few teachers were quite rude to us - I remember one occasion school sending out a desperate plea to the PTA for help building scenery and making costumes for a big performance they were doing. Several of us rocked up on the given day at the given time only to be spoken to very rudely by the teacher who was supposed to be in charge of us all. She proceeded to get ruder and ruder as the morning went on.

I never joined the PTA proper, just helped out whenever needed. There were a few parents who were a PITA but on the whole everyone was lovely

We never asked staff for help, never did anything in school time unless specifically asked to by the head, always cleared up after an event. Some staff were lovely and volunteered to help, some were downright rude and obstructive

Imagine working in a job and you need pens. then imagine your boss saying come in on Saturday (your day off) to raise money so u can have pens.. bring your children it’ll be fun and all the customers (nice and not so nice) will be there.. that’s what PTA events feel like to teachers..

Imagine having a full time job and spending hours and hours of your own time to organise events to raise money to buy the pens, then being sneered at by teachers and other parents. That's how it felt to be on the PTA.

I’ve done some work on the PTA and prior to that was on a preschool committee for a long time. I have been appalled By the attitudes of the PTA / committee at times to the staff, in particular the teaching staff. My view is, as some PP have said, that we should be there to ideally help but certainly not hinder. I would never expect teachers / staff to volunteer their own time (they do enough of that just in the job anyway) and always voted against that taking place. Most times I would be the only person voting that while everyone else thought staff should want to do extra evenings and weekends just for the love of it.

If I am helping in school I am doing my best not to get in the way and I am clear that I am on their turf, not mine. I don’t always achieve this and can completely see why staff might dislike the PTA. Teaching is a shit job at the best of times.

That said, the current PTA seems to have an ok relationship with the staff but would never hold any events like that on school time.

Estrella, you actually sound like one of the nightmare PTA parents. Your attitude is awful.

At my old school, the PTA was just like what Estrella sounds like. They were very angry when they decided to have a Saturday fete, assigned teachers certain jobs (no, I'm not spending the day sitting in a dunk tank thank you), and pulled the 'why won't you put yourself out for your students?' card.

Then there was the time they held a Friday night disco. Because what everyone wants to do on Friday night is work for free. To make it worse, I'd come back that afternoon from a five day school camp, but I was still expected to be there. The PTA stood in a room off to the side and drank coffee and expected the teachers to do all of the supervising. Then they pissed off at the end of the disco, citing that they had to get their kids to bed, and left the staff to do all of the cleaning up. I'd just paid for a babysitter to live in for five days, but sure, what's another hundred dollars or so on top of the thousand it already cost me, for the pleasure of not seeing my child until the Saturday morning after having been away for a week looking after other people's children?

The head of the PTA thought that their job gave them an all access pass to the school. They would wander into the school office, you could walk into your classroom after yard duty and she'd have taken over your desk for her "very important task".

So yes, the staff at that school hated the PTA. In reality, they didn't actually raise that much money, and certainly none of it was ever spent in my classroom (I used my own money).

The school I'm at now are much better. Attendance is appreciated, but not mandatory, you aren't assigned jobs without your consent, and they believe that their role shouldn't increase the workload of staff. As such, everything works very nicely, and teachers are actually more willing to work with the PTA.

There are some schools who are more welcoming to parents than others (and MN in general has a tendency to hate the PTA). Our school is very very open to parental engagement and you'll generally find at least 2-3 parents around school hearing readers, or baking with the kids, or gardening or gluing work into books or whatever. We also don't tend to push a "PTA agenda" as such in terms of what we fundraise towards - it'll be something that's come from the teaching staff or Head that the school budget can't cover but will be a quality of life thing - and we'll have that as a big target, or there'll be a list of stuff the staff have asked for in terms of nice extra stuff (so it's often things like new classroom rugs to pretty the place up, or wet playtime games and things) or stuff the PTA funds as an ongoing thing - like Easter eggs for all the kids or the Christmas tree for the hall.

And yes, I do know my way around the school very very well - but I don't take the piss over it at all - I don't go in the staffroom at all during the teaching day unless they're using it to have a meeting involving me in it (hell, I'm not fully comfortable going in to make a cuppa when I'm in as a school governor while the staff are on their break), and if I'm going in to a classroom during a playtime or lunchtime - I won't go in if the teacher's not there because it's THEIR teaching space and not mine - I'll wait outside. Yes, I know things of massive importance within school like where certain year groups hide their biscuit stash, where the stationery cupboard key is and where the glue sticks are squirrelled away - but I do keep the line very very strictly drawn - but I'm from a teaching background myself so I think I know how things can go in terms of pushing it and irritating more than a lot of parents might.

PTA do all the setup and clearing away incidentally - like someone else mentioned - they photograph classrooms if they're using them to put them back into the state they were in and they either tidy up after the event or if it's one like our last one which was a Friday night very late one - the following morning a clean up team will do it - staff volunteer if they're wanting to come help at an event (and we have a lot of staff local who do this) but there are teachers who don't - one is very very strict about her work/life demarcation and I really respect her for being able to do that (she's blooming likely to stay sane a lot longer than most of us!)

I am the most un-Queen Bee parent you will ever meet incidentally. I know no inside-tracks on school information from doing the PTA (apart from where the staff hide their biscuits). If I wanted to know the ins and outs of school there are easier ways to do it than manning a tea urn for hours on end! Gets me no front row tickets to school plays, no guaranteed pass to get onto school trips - I went on a lot last year just from the luck of the draw (they pull parents wanting/volunteering to go out of a hat), this year I've not gone on any... I do it to help the teachers out really - less frazzled teachers = a better outcome for my own kids really.

Estrella
I would never sneer... just want the PTA to be aware that being at school on your day off is not fun!

@MidniteScribbler you're wrong there. We suggested a weekend because the teachers didn't want a week night because their kids had clubs etc. There are only so many days in a week!

Plus we were not able to run as many stalls as we couldn't staff them with parents alone. So less money made, less money for the school.

We ran almost everything without teachers but did the biggest event of the year we were only asking for maybe 3/4 extra pairs of hands, for one or two hours each.

And to be fair @MidniteScribbler your PTA sounds like a bunch of dicks. At our discos we did absolutely everything, no teacher support asked for at all. Swept the floors, everything.

You couldn’t run stalls with parents alone? So say a one form entry, 8 teachers, 240 children.... and it was teachers you were short of? Seems there are far more parents to recruit, or is it just the teachers are trapped?

Tbh I got to the point where I just accepted the lack of resources. No glue sticks, a vat of PVA. Write with pencils, or bring your own pen. Books from the 1980s can be surprisingly good... Ipads? They didn’t seem short of devices outside school. My last school didn’t have a PTA, you wouldn’t have guessed on a day to day basis.