Retirement party ideas

[degrassi]

My mom is a elementary teacher and is retiring this year. We are having a big party at the end of Oct at our community hall with all her friends/ co workers. So far my mom has been planning most of it: booking the hall, organizing the caterer(my aunt is a caterer), liquor license, etc. I've been helping a lot as I still live at home and I was going to help a lot with the food as thats more my area then decorations/organizing.

So far everything has been going fine but today my mom showed me the invitation mock up and it looks good but she put "8pm: program". I asked what this meant and she said she thought people(ie probably me:faint would organize something like speeches or something. I told her and she knows I can't do public speaking. I get terrified of speaking in public. I didn't even give a speech at my sister's wedding. So I dont' know what to do. Just thinking about it now has made me all worried. I was hoping I can pawn it off on my brother.

I don't even see why we need to have a scheduled "program". Can't we just say something like " if anyone wants to come up and share a story about my mom" they can. I had already planned on doing a collage/bulletin board of pictures of my mom throughout the years. Its just my mom is so touchy about things like this that if I say I dont' want to be in charge of speeches, even if I organize and do the rest, she will probably get upset and I feel its all my fault(years of guilt induced anxiety)ullhair:

I hate being the only child still living at home. I get stuck with doing this type of stuff while my brother and sister dont' have to worry about it. I hate when we have parties, they are more work then fun for me.

Any suggestions? Ideas on what we could maybe do to make it special without having to make a speech? I thought about a slide show but I dont' have enough pictures of her teaching to make a slide show, thats why i was going with the bulletin board/collage idea instead. :help

 

[degrassi]

Nothing like a panic attack to start your day off but I talked with my brother and i'm feeling a bit better now.

I'm going to send him a email list of some of mom's teacher friends and he will ask if they are willing to say something or if they have anything they would want to do. And he's going to talk to my mom and stuff.

Isn't family drama fun Things that should be loving and fun usually turn into stressful, frustrating experiences. Makes me love doing things for people. Ugh

 

[JadeIcing]

For my aunts 50th we passed a microphone around. If you wanted to say anything you could raise your hand.

 

[Purple Mountain Rabbitry]

You could do a slide show including some of your memories. Slideshows are always special. MR.C my choir teacher did some for our seniors class of choir kids and for our disneyland kids you could even record your voice to put along with it or just do songs. they really do say alot.

 

[degrassi]

I wanted to do a slide show but I dont' have enough pictures. Right now after looking through all our albums I only found 6 pics that have anything to do with my mom being a teacher. All our pics are of us kids and school.

So I'm going to make a poster board/bulletin board collage of all the pics I can find and maybe a few notes from some students instead. My mom taught grade 1 so its not like a can track down the students and get them to write notes. My brother does have a few friends that were students of hers so i'm going to ask if they would give a few nice words to add on.

I wish I would have thought ahead and saved some of the xmas cards/end of the year cards she has received over the years. We also had a few pics of students floating around the house but I have no idea where those went.

Hopefully I can find a few more pics. I'm going to ask some of her teacher friends if they have any.

 

[Purple Mountain Rabbitry]

or even if you add in pictures of you guys and tell stories of how she was with you guys at home.was she still like a teacher at home. how she taught you. etc. just some ideas

 

[degrassi]

Oh My Darlin Rabbitry wrote:

or even if you add in pictures of you guys and tell stories of how she was with you guys at home.was she still like a teacher at home. how she taught you. etc. just some ideas

I was going to use some of our stuff out of our baby/kid scrapbooks as filler. Mom used to always make us activity books, craft projects etc.

Or i'm going to see if I can find pictures of our first days of school and see if mom is in any of them as it was her first days too.

 

[missyscove]

What about filming some other teachers, former students, etc. and making a video?

 

[Purple Mountain Rabbitry]

Cute Idea missy. That would def. be cool and memorable.

 

[NorthernAutumn]

Missy's idea of the video is spot- on. I was going to suggest the same thing.

The problem is, when you do it as a hand raising or "who wants to share", the odds of people putting up their hands really goes down.
I was at a birthday party recently. Someone said, can someone come up and share a story about Doug - wouldn't you believe it, out of a room of 150 people, not ONE put up their hand .

I felt very sad and embarassed about it - I was a date of a guest who knew him a little. Doug must have felt really bummed that no one would take that risk to make him feel special.

Even if someone hates a video camera, you could still record their voice and play it over a slideshow.

 

[degrassi]

Thanks for the ideas.

I talked with one of my mom's close friends, whos a teacher that worked at the same school as my mom. She said she is willing to ask around and organize some people to say a few things.

I'm not too worried about people being scared to say something in front of a crowd. Since everyone there will be teachers they are used to speaking in front of people and all the people going know each other and have been friends for years. I was more over whelmed with having to organize that on top of everything else for the party.

So thankfully Deb has stepped up and said she'll help. She knows all mom's teacher friends so it will be easier for her then if I were to call/email everyone myself.

I've started making the scrapbook/collage/ shadow box picture for my mom. I bought a big shadow box picture frame and I've found some good pictures to put in it. I found her graduation pic from Uni, some old pics from the 70's of her students/classroom and some recent shots of her reading to her kids. Then I have a few notes and decorations i'm going to add too. So when its done it will look like a big scrapbook/memory page in a picture frame.

 

[Purple Mountain Rabbitry]

Thats great. good luck and let us know how everything goes

crystal