Laurie Gelman

Jim Brickman: Today in the Brickman Book Club.   It is  perfect read just in time for that “Back to School Night” or Open House.  Its a brand new book called “Class Mom” and it’s about what it’s really like to be the Classroom Mother – not all field trips and parties.  It’s from Author & 25 year broadcasting veteran Laurie Gelman.  She is here to share her experiences about the book.  Laurie, welcome to the show.

JB:  Well the emails in the book may paint a different picture.  Can you share some of your experiences as a class mom and how they made it into the book?

LG:  Well the, the emails that are in the book are almost verbatim to the ones I sent to my class when I was a class mom.  And I did it because I was always so bored reading the class mom emails because they basically just cut and paste what the parent association asks them to put in, and everbodys is the same and it’s just a grocery list of things you need to do and I thought you know how do you get people to really want to read the class mom emails, so the first one I wrote I said hey we’re going to need jello shots, for the class for the parent night and who’s bringing the keg and you know, a lot of sort of a cervic snarky things and uhm it really, it really took off, so when I was writing the book, I didn’t want any of my personal things or personal uhm experiences to be in the book.  But I did want the emails and sort of the snarky attitude I had

JB: One thing that people may not realize is that being the class mom, means that you’re the liaison between the parents and teacher.  So I’m sure you get a lot of emails.  So like whats the craziest one you’ve ever got from a parent

LG:  Do You know what’s funny?  I don’t remember getting crazy emails, I was the one who sent the crazy emails.   The Emails I got back were like, are you kidding me?  Are you Serious? I mean they were just, everybody was just so confused at first.  They didn’t know what to expect and then they finally sort of got used to my sense of humor and then all of a sudden I would get these funny emails back from parents and everybody sort of got on the bandwagon.

JB:  You say that being the Class Mom was the hardest job you ever had, was there anything about it that was easy?

LG:  Oh there was lots about it that I enjoyed.  I mean I loved being in the classroom with my children.  Getting to see them in that environment, uh, you learn a lot about your kids when you see them.  They get to a point where they forget that you’re there and their interacting with other people.  It was really cool and I loved uhm, getting to know all the parents because that’s what really your job is to know all the parents and know all their kids and know things about them and you know there were a lot of good things but the bad things were sort of the funnier things that happened 

JB:  Find out what happened to Laurie in Part two of my interview, you can hear it only at Jimbrickman.com