We organised for Nerida to look after the kids so we could both go to the information night at the school. For some reason I had the impression this would be interesting and useful.
It was a bizarre combination of being lectured about following school rules, and listening to a passionate defence of their decision to create to K/1 classes as a result of too many kindy kids for one class. It was not terribly informative, and having to breastfeed sitting in a kindy chair didn't really enhance the experience.
There was no discussion of parent helpers, that was just in a note we took home. I could have got that without using babysitter points.
Ben's teacher seems nice enough. I shan't be making any efforts to make sure both of us get to another one.
The defensiveness over the K/1 composites was unsettling. They defended it to the point of me starting to wonder if it was going to be a major problem. Up until this evening, I was only annoyed that they had managed to move all the kids Ben knew into the other class. Well, not quite all, he is sitting next to one kid whose name he had mentioned previously. I'm still pretty confident that it will be fine, but Crash is less convinced. I presume some parents got very stroppy.
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I'd say you can be quite sure a number of parents got very stroppy. It's probable that avoiding composite classes was a big factor in some families choosing to go with the K-2 school rather than whichever K-6 place they might have been looking at - composite classes freak out many parents. And almost always without reason.
ReplyDeleteWhen you consider that even in a straight class the teacher is dealing with up to 18 months spread in ages I really don't think it makes all that much difference to have some of the kids labeled a different grade.
I did the "meet the teacher night" thing last week, I quite enjoyed the session for Tom's class but then I have known his teacher since we were in Sunday school together as kids. Caitlin's teacher bored the socks off me and put my teeth on edge by repeatedly mispronouncing Roald Dahl as Roald Dale but I left half-way through that session to go to Dave's classroom. Dave's teachers wouldn't shut up and went nearly 30 minutes over time. All in all I found it pretty tedious and pointless too.
Guys if it is any consolation I'm sure the kids think their teachers are tedious and pointless, as well. Or they will do come the end of the year, ah school days, such memories...
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