CRISES AND VOLUNTEERING
At the moment that I am writing this, I have just gone through one of the most exhausting and stressful three months of my life. The briefs in the LA abuse/homeschooling case have been given to the clerk. Although the lawyers who have worked on the issue won’t know if the judges will actually agree to read them for some days yet, we know that we have done everything we can possibly do. No new legislation has been introduced. The media is under control and increasingly favorable toward homeschooling. But the work put in by many, many people to get to this point of relative calm has been unfathomably huge.
As this crisis unfolded, a number of people asked how they could help. These people fell into two general categories. The first is people who had already been working on homeschooling issues for some years, and the second was people who saw a need and wanted to contribute. Now, I haven’t gone and read any books about crisis management, but I bet what I’m about to say is in them. It’s the people in the first group who could make a meaningful contribution.
Some of the people who were sucked into the firestorm are people who have been involved in homeschooling for years: Ann Zeise, Diane Flynn Keith, Lillian Jones, Mary Nix of Home Education Magazine, Mary Griffith, Wes Beach, Stephen Greenberg and the women who have been leaders of CHEA and CHN. Some are people who have been active for HSC: Leslie Buchanan, Kathy Smith, Tammy Takahashi, Corin Goodwin. It was an enormous comfort to open my email inbox and see messages from these names, since I knew that they already had knowledge and experience I could draw from, that they were taking meaningful actions that made a big difference. I had worked with them before and knew them and their temperaments, and, most importantly, knew that I could trust them.
So what’s my point? The best way to help in a crisis is to have started volunteering in times of peace. A crisis is no time to start. Crises aren’t handed to the Boss, who then organizes a team. In a crisis, a giant mess might fall from the sky on everyone, but things start happening because of people who, whether through some understanding of a chain of command or just through a sense that they’re in a position to act effectively, start actually trying to face the issues raging at them from many directions at once. They aren’t blowing you off if you offer to help and never hear from them. They’re getting 200 emails an hour, facing calls from all sides, fighting for their lives. They are going to turn to the people who already know something about the legal, political, cultural landscape, who have a sense of whom to call about this and how to manage that. They can’t train a new volunteer.
I know the Board includes really sweet messages from time to time about how FUN volunteering is, all the friends you’ll make. Every word of that is true, and I’ll talk more about that later, but I’m not sure that’s an effective way to draw people in. I’ll come at it from a different angle that has proven very effective across many cultures: guilt. I don’t know what possessed me nine years ago to check the box at the bottom of some HSC form that said “Interested in volunteering? Check here and indicate where you think you could help”, but it started me on a very long, very interesting and very rewarding path. It was probably that same Midwestern sense of guilt, the Protestant work ethic, that has driven me all my life. I had a skill (law) and I thought HSC could use it. They did.
I know that so many people put in loads of time with their park day groups, their co-ops, their 4-H programs. They feel like they’re giving all they can. But there’s a continuous need for new leadership at the statewide level, and in our particular field, it’s only going to come from other parents who also have dirty dishes and kids who haven’t finished their math. Every leader HSC has is an overcommitted parent who really, honestly, doesn’t have time, but somehow makes it. My kids haven’t done a whole lot of formal homeschooling since March 2, but they’ve gotten one heck of an education about activism, dealing with the media, dedication to a cause.
In a crisis, your park day group can’t do much other than find people who can talk to the media or help disseminate accurate information. It’s the statewide organizations that protect homeschooling’s backside, that keep Sacramento’s itchy fingers off of us. Sure, they put on great campouts and terrific conferences, but that’s not all of it. These statewide groups are the ones watching, monitoring. And they’re the ones that pop up in a Google search when someone wants to talk to leaders of homeschooling. They’re the ones that get the phone calls from legislative aides who are exploring ideas, the ones that get weird calls from newspapers. And they’re the ones who are expected to deal with it when you know what hits the fan, as it did this Spring.
There’s no training for working at the statewide level other than doing it. Sure, I had a professional skill, but I’ve used that skill only a small part of the time. Most of the time, what has been needed is a willingness to spend time, to listen, to learn, to lead. The only requirements for the job are an interest in protecting this amazing opportunity we have of helping our children develop in safe, nurturing environments.
HSC needs people to help at every level. The conference doesn’t run itself, the newsletter needs writers, campouts need organizing. But it particularly needs people who are willing to serve on the Board, on the legal team, and on the legislative team. These are the heart and soul of what keep homeschooling available as a choice. Kathy Smith and Leslie Buchanan, my main Board contacts during this whole affair, started out by volunteering in other areas, but then took the next step. You should all be grateful they did, but you should express your gratitude by thinking about how YOU can help and whether you could take that next step. Do it now. The Board is ALWAYS looking for new people. The legal team is ALWAYS happy to hear from parents with law degrees who want to contribute. The legislative team is ALWAYS delighted when someone says that legislation interests them and they want to get involved. But if no one does, then we might not be so lucky in the next crisis.
Back to the fun part. I have known, by reputation or prior work, all of the homeschooling veterans I mentioned earlier. But I know them a lot better now. I sort of wish we could all be placed on a beach together somewhere with a tub of cold drinks and a lot of chairs, so that we could talk, and laugh, and enjoy the camaraderie that comes from standing shoulder to shoulder and facing down the monsters. I understand much better now why my dad, who was in combat, still goes to reunions 35 years later with his war time buddies.
If I’ve helped any small little twinges start in you about how you should give back to an organization dedicated to keeping your family free, and if those twinges make you think that maybe you should send an inquiring email through the contact page at the website to the board, or the legal team, or the legislative team, then I’ve accomplished what I set out to do. Don’t compound the twinges by not acting on it. Make them go away BY acting on it. Now.
Debbie Schwarzer
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