"Volunteer" role at Junior High School

This school year (April 2024 - March 2025) is the first year since two of my children entered Junior High School that a parent of every child was asked to do a "volunteer" job at the school. Essentially, it is not volunteering. I do know one person who refused to 'volunteer', but essentially it is expected. These roles are separate to the parent-teacher association roles. 

It was the way it was before the pandemic too, reportedly. But they cut out more than three quarters of the volunteer roles during the pandemic and so I didn't have to do it the last four years, even though two of my children entered the school during that period. And because I have never done it before, I am still not familiar with exactly what roles they have.

All I remember is that each of them brought a form home at the start of the school year (April 2024) and there was a choice of volunteer duties from which we had to select one. I know one is rubbish collection, because that's what my husband did for my second grader. For my third grader, I did a flower role. When I saw a "flower" option on the form I didn't bother looking at the options and selected that one. My flower volunteer duty was on the week before last.

I had envisioned having to go around the Junior High School grounds weeding flower beds or sowing seeds or something. But as it turned out, it was an even more pleasant experience. We were brought into a room with a large selection of flowers, given a vase, and asked to make up a flower arrangement in the vase! It was a lot of fun and as a flower lover I did not see it as a chore. After we had made up the arrangements, we decided between us where to display the vases. Mine was chosen for the 'genkan', the entrance to the school. I was pretty happy with that.

I really enjoyed the experience. Furthermore, it only took up an hour of my time. Next year I will be willingly volunteering for the flower volunteer job again!