I woke Klara up early and dragged her to school only to realize that there’s no school today.
“Why did you wake me up if there’s no school, Mommy?” Klara asked.
“Because I’m a bloody idiot,” I replied.
“I don’t know what that means,” Klara said primly, “but I hope it means ‘best mommy ever’ because that’s what you are.”
I’m still feeling like a bloody idjit because I didn’t have to wake up early either. I can’t wait for October to end and my busy season to recede into memory.
Could have been a parent-teacher conference day.
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In North America, schools shut down every now and then for “teacher days.” In some places, it happens quite often. It’s always very random, so you can’t really predict it.
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I feel like many aspects of American school functioning and culture are wildly different now than when I was in school in the 70s and 80s. I don’t have kids, but I have lots of friends with kids and also know some teachers and school sounds so bizarre to me when they talk about it.
We homeschool, and I have been having to draw some fairly harsh boundaries with the neighbor kid, because he’s constantly coming over and asking to play with my kids, when they are still doing their “school” day– even though we only put in like three hours a day, and it’s (I thought!) well within normal school hours. I cannot figure out if the local elementary school just has a crazy number of holidays, really weird hours, or if the kid’s mother just has a very, very lax attitude about school attendance. So confusing!
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Good for you to keep it around 3 hours daily. There’s absolutely no need for more, in my opinion. I believe that if at this age you need 6 hours to teach what they need to learn, you aren’t doing it right.
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Couldn’t do 6 hours if we wanted to! They are healthy, energetic children and it simply wouldn’t work– they stop paying attention after 3. It doesn’t work in schools, either, but that never stops them…
Even 3– it’s not three straight hours, its like, do a bit of math and reading, then go outside, draw some bugs, run around, hang out laundry, eat lunch, and go back and do history and science, put in some violin practice, and then turn them outdoors to play for the rest of the day. And some days it’s like, eh, sun finally came out after three days, let’s just go to the park because I know they’re only going to stare out the windows anyway. Or maybe everybody’s cranky so let’s just go to the library.
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One thing I find strange is that the teacher in the first grade doesn’t try to get the kids to quiet down during class. The din is absolutely overwhelming. I asked my kid and she confirmed that it’s like that all the time. It must be some new pedagogical approach.
My mother taught elementary school and had no trouble keeping her group of 35 kids quiet during class time. So it’s not impossible.
I told Klara’s teacher I’d lose my mind by the end of the first day in this noise and she smiled sadly.
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The local public schools are demanding a permanent “online Friday.” What the working parents are supposed to do about their full-time jobs is never discussed. This wouldn’t hurt the families like ours but it would be financially crippling for working class families, single mothers, people who work in the service industry, and all lower-income families.
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Two for one! Forces lower-income parents to reduce their workforce participation and ensures that fewer of their kids will be competing with your kids for the good jobs, later.
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
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