PTA

pain in the arse.

Noooo. or maybe yes.

I don't know.

Parent Teacher Association.

Desperate for more parents to get involved. Really desperate by the sounds of the school newsletter.

All this activism and involvement malarkey I go on about til people have to leave to be sick. I like to do it with romantic aims. Save the whales and join Greenpeace. Tick. Done that replete with posters of boats and sealife on my student walls. Support the call for a just world with New Internationalist. Tick. Done that and got some posters then also. They went on the walls of my classroom when I started teaching. Get strong and defensive against violent strangers in the night. Tick. Organised and attended a women's self defence class in my local community in the early 1990s. Fight poverty. Tick. Got involved in the Child Poverty Action Group in Auckland. Stop the War. Tick. Marched against US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. Got involved in the Socialist workers group in London briefly around then. That's a whole story for another time. Being Green in the community. Tick. Got involved in a local recycling lobby and promotion group here in small town last year. That had its own dramas also.

And now it appears that Fionn's school needs parents to get involved. They listed the things the PTA fundraises for and I approved (I don't always). It was the community feel of the school that we warmed to when we went to the first school gala 18 months ago. That won't continue without parental involvement.

But PTAs are so unromantic. So not glamorous or visionary and actually likely to be time consuming (no matter what they promise) and frustrating.

So am I going to be a 'good' girl? A 'good' mummy? The last sentence makes me want to go and drink the school fees money at the pub now and not bother to get dressed tomorrow.

I don't know.

The meeting is next Monday.