oliviatamccue

Summer months often start well, when my kids takes a break from school.  There is just that air of relaxation and even laziness when school, homework, grades and due dates are no longer topics of family dinners.   By early August, “back to school” starts to sound good to get the kids back to the groove.

This summer, I signed up for volunteering activities in a local non-profit community center which provides needy families with “back to school” supplies.  My role was to meet the family and take them to the storage room to choose a backpack and pick up some school supplies.  The whole process took less than 10 minutes for each family, and it served as such a reminder of these needy families around us.   In my childhood, my parents were equally anxious about the expenses incurred in school.  Education has been one of the most important mean to get out of the financial hardship. Decades after,  I could not manufacture the same hardship for my children – for their elementary school years, their back to school preparation was no more eventful than a trip to a retail store to get everything on the back-to-school supplies list.

This school year, I serve, as Registrar,  on the Board of a non-profit Chinese School.  This is a new experience, and there is such an amount of work to start a school year.  I have a deeper respect for the many school staff who does it year after year.  Such as

• Order textbook, find a place to store the textbook.
• Keep track of the student list.
• Prepare 1st letter to families.
• Mail the letter to the families
• Mail email reminder to families.
• Print map and student rosters on the first day of school
  

It is a few days of work just to prepare the letters and address labels, print them, put the letter to the envelope with the right label, then adhere the stamps on envelopes, plus some hours to double check that the letter goes to the right envelope.

Technology sometimes disillusions us most things can be done by a push of button, and inadvertently instills a small disdain of tedious work.  It helps to be reminded that it is that someone doing some tedious work that make the world run smoothly.   

One day we may miss the number of hours that we spend in these back-to-school activities –  these hours reflect our willingness to exchange our time to make the back-to-school experience better for the parents and the students.