Too Much of a Good Thing

Here's a story about how little power I have in my office...

One of the things that I'm in charge of is the district's day of professional development that we've dubbed the Erlanger-Elsmere Teaching and Learning Conference. This is a daylong conference-style professional development where teachers can attend five one hour training sessions. During each hour the teachers can choose from 13 or so different sessions, ranging from technology to special education to promoting parent involvement. It's all good stuff, and we give teachers an hour and a half for lunch on this day, under the theory that they're going to go off to lunch with each other and discuss what they learned in the morning anyway.

An hour and a half for lunch sounds like a lot of time, and it is, but I think anyone reading this will attest to the fact that once you get talking to a group of people in a restaurant, time can pass quickly. We wanted to make sure that everyone came back from lunch ON TIME, so the EETLC committee came up with the idea to give away door prizes as soon we come back from lunch. It's a good idea; this is the 3rd year we've had the EETLC, and in past years we've had almost every teacher back on time.

This year, though, the committee member in charge of getting door prizes was having trouble getting them. With only a few weeks left before the conference, she only had 2 or 3 door prizes. I mentioned this to one of the secretaries at the office, and she decided she wanted to show teachers how much she loved them, so she started calling every business in Erlanger, Elsmere and even in the surrounding areas. A couple of weeks ago one of the other secretaries came to me and said, "Peggy's doing great. She has about 20 or 30 door prizes."

"That's awesome!" I said. "And it's just the right number. I'm going to go out and thank her." I did. I went out and told her I was VERY grateful for all that she'd done, and that I felt like that was enough. "We only have maybe 10 or 15 minutes to give out door prizes," I said. "I think 20 or 30 will be MORE than enough."

"But I'm just getting started," she said. She held up a piece of paper and I could see that there were many more unchecked names of businesses than checked ones. "This is fun!"

"It may be fun," I said, and I looked at her in a serious way. "But really. I think we're fine."

I thought that was that until about a week ago when someone else in the office said, just in passing, "I think Peggy is almost finished making calls for donations."

"She's STILL making calls!" I asked.

"She's been making calls for weeks," this person said. "We're up to over 75 items at this point."

I went out to Peggy's desk. I think she heard me from my office, because she saw me coming and had a look on her face like a dog that's been caught eating food off of the kitchen counter. "Peggy," I said. "These donations. They really have to stop. Not only are we eating into the time for the presenter, but I was planning to place their logos all around the schedule we were going to hand out the day of the conference. There's no way I can do that now. We'll have too many. I'm going to have to come up with a different solution. You're creating MORE work for me!"

"Pshaw!" she said. "I still have some people who've promised to bring things in, and I have a few more calls I want to make."

"Please, please, PLEASE!" I said. "Finish up with the oustanding promises, but don't make ANY more calls."

She promised, but the next day I heard her from my desk cold calling someone else. This time I didn't even bother to go out and talk with her.

The final tally: 95 donations totalling more than $4,500. There are going to be a lot of happy teachers at the conference next Friday. We have so many donations that we've decided to cancel the speakers we had lined up for breakfast and do about 1/3 of the door prizes during breakfast.

What I'm missing in all of this, I know, is Peggy's generosity. Most people's personality is about half heart and about half intellect. Peggy is the only person I think I've ever met who is 100% heart. She got it in her mind to do something for the teachers, and she did it. Also missing is the generosity of all of the local businesses who donated all of those gift certificates and Entertainment books and gift baskets and some things even nicer than that. People complain a lot about the state of education today, but most people truly CARE about the teachers who teach their children, and given a chance, the owners of all of these local businesses were glad to show they cared.

And that's all great, and I'm sure next Friday I'll be overcome with both of those things. Yesterday, though, I spent four hours putting all of those local business's logos on the back of the schedule, and I left work none too happy about it.