The Crawford Journey: It Takes a Village

Meadow View Mountain Lions - so glad my art degree is being used!

This year I thought I had a bright idea... our school needed a new event! Since I am such a cheerleader for "building community", I presented the PTO with the idea of doing an End of School Bash. They said, "It is hard to get volunteers" - "No problem," I exclaimed. "Trust me - I'll get them." "There are to many budget cuts," they said. "Don't worry - I bet we can even make a little money." Bottom line - I sold them on it. And lucky for me, my friend (or at least she has become my friend through this), Brenda - the PTO President - caught the vision and really encouraged me. And then with the organizational help of Val and Joni, we started planning.

Let's do a movie on a giant inflatable screen outside! Let's give away glow in the dark necklaces! How about free popcorn? Maybe a silent auction where the teachers donate their time. Let's build games! Let's have the principal play Wii against a student. And you have to have cool T-shirt! The ideas kept on flowing. Our goals were to build school spirit, have families interact, welcome the new kindies into the school and of course have fun.

But the closer we got to the date, the more I realized I picked the worst date in the whole year. At least 30 people I knew that I could usually count on to attend events were not going to attend. I stood outside the school to sell tickets and only sold one or two a day. 11 volunteers backed out the week before the event. Not that numbers are EVERYTHING - but come on, I come from a youth ministry background and numbers were important to me! In fact it reminded me of one of the reasons I burned out from ministry - I couldn't stand it if an event wasn't successful.

I started to fear that my kids would be the only ones that showed up. Imagine that - 50 volunteers, 2 bouncy houses, plenty of games and only my kids! The principal had much more faith than I did and she was SO excited, I thought I might break out in hives! All my big talk and it was going to be a flop.

Well - it was a SUCCESS! Volunteers showed up and were WONDERFUL, over 500 people attended, the principal just kept walking around and saying, "This is perfect!" And the interaction - people were meeting each other and talking. Parents were getting their hair spray painted green and dancing with their kids. It was nothing fancy, kids made spirit bracelets, played games and watched Space Buddies, but it felt safe, it felt fun and it felt like a real community. A friend that was telling me she felt disconnected from the school had so much fun she volunteered to chair the event for next year.