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Home › Articles › Back to School Headquarters › Helping Out During the Junior High Years

Helping Out During the Junior High Years

Getting – and Staying – Involved at Your Child's School

By Sharon Waldrop

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Part of the reason that parent volunteerism decreases over the years may be due to children developing a need for independence. When I was a first-grade room mom, my daughter used to smile and wave to me during class as I filled glue bottles. She sat on my lap during story time and begged me to stay for lunch. When this same child was in sixth grade, she would wave to me once from a distance across the hallway and continue her conversation with friends.

Cindy Phiffer is the mother of a junior high student in Murfreesboro, Tenn. "My son went through a time of trying to keep me away from his school when he went into the seventh grade," she says. "He told me that other parents could handle things and it really made him nervous that other kids would make fun of me."

Cindy listened to him at first, afraid that she would cause him to be ridiculed at a time when being different is generally unacceptable to other kids. When she was asked to help at school with a magazine sale, her son said that would be fine. What Cindy saw while at school was her son in a room full of other kids who looked and acted remarkably awkward. Their self-consciousness was nearly strong enough to taste.

"I knew that they were caught in the space between elementary and high school, childhood and adulthood, today and tomorrow," Cindy says.

A Glimpse of Life at School

Deanne from Long Beach, Calif. is the mother of three daughters. Her eighth grader will be graduating from junior high this year. Deanne is an active parent volunteer, although most of her current duties are within the school but outside of the classroom.

Deanne and some other parents of eighth graders are currently working on the upcoming eighth grade graduation ceremony. "We have a video production crew, a decoration committee and a dinner committee, each with a chairperson," Deanne says. "Being active in my daughter's school gives me the comfort level of knowing what the kids are up to. Also, it's nice to know the parents of the kids that my kids hang out with."


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