“Never volunteer!” is the old army adage. “Volunteering looks great on the resume!” is the old job-hunter’s adage.

 

I was never in the army and never will be, now, as I’m 48. I am, however, coming into my 19^th month of unemployment and I have a son with autism, so I thought it would be a wholesome idea to devote my time and talents to volunteering for his school. Plus I’m looking for a job – who’s kidding who – and showing up at a school and nagging professionals to put together newsletters or hold parent socials or do something they’ve wanted to be doing for a while anyway but never got around to might be a good way to get noticed when the money finally loosens up.

 

Why yes, this no-longer-so-young young go-getter would make a splendid addition to our team of paid people! Does that ever happen anymore?

 

The first initiative was to join the School Leadership Team, where parents and teachers meet once a month to discuss everything from T shirt sales to political action when New York City talks about closing or overcrowding schools. (I don’t feel completely certain the teachers want me there – they claim to, but what else are they going to say? This is the brand of cynicism I honed in the private sector.) “SLT’s used to have a lot more power,” someone told me when I joined, but I find power enough (and the longer you’re unemployed, of course, the less power it takes to top you up).

 

Last spring I soapboxed in public hearing after public hearing as the SLT Representative speaking against a move that would overcrowd Alex’s school. It was fun: part craftsmanship, part showmanship, like a real and satisfying job. And just last meeting, I floated the idea of a kind of MovieFone for our schools that would allow parents to call in and hear a recording about the important school stuff coming up over the next few weeks.

 

The ideas and hearings don’t seem to be getting me much noticed by name, but of course “that’s not why one volunteers” is the old volunteer’s adage.

 

Next, I’m helping put together something we call socials: parents and teachers getting together not in the formal 1950s-style PARENT/TEACHER CONFERENCE, but over knitting or or a jigsaw puzzle, getting to know each other without the desk between. (We held one last year and whipped Alex’s science teacher at Sorry.) I got the idea while I was I doing a (paid) presentation at another school a few years ago and the subject of parent involvement came up. I tell myself that this is a good thing to do – make people more aware of what the other guy is thinking; bring together people who may have to team up to fight in the coming years of scarcer money. Which these days is another good reason for one to volunteer, isn’t it?

 

Finally came newsletters, a category that meshed my professional skills (what the rust has left of them) and the need for schools and parents to keep the communication flowing. We’re working on a monthly, one 8 ½-x-11 sheet, English on one side and Spanish on the other, with pictures, calendars, messages from teachers, and some evergreen stuff I crib from the Net on such topics as where to get your kid’s hair cut or how to get through holiday parties with your autistic child. I envision a network of newsletters, one for each of the several sites that Alex’s public school operates, with me coordinating copy like an eight-armed Perry White working on different editions of the Daily Planet. Except Perry White got paid.

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