Well the start of the school year has brought about some interesting and frustrating issues regarding teachers and their roles / responsibilities.
We are all aware of the teachers whole work to rule issue and for the most part we get it – at least I do. However there are some issues that are so frustrating – not just to us the parents, but to the children as well.
I have children in three different schools. Elementary, Middle and High school and each school has acted and behaved differently.
My daughters high school has been affected on a minor scale. She is still on the Drama clubs executive, part of the drama club and some other activities that take place after school. There have been minor disruptions, and we even had our first parent teacher conferences last week.
My son’s middle school is still offering hot lunches, pizza lunches and had their annual open house last week – in the evening with I believe ALL teachers present to welcome the parents and students and to discuss our children’s progress so far.
The elementary school however has been the biggest challenge and frankly the one I was most surprised about. Every possible activity outside of school hours have been cancelled,so this includes lunch time programs, track and field, orchestra and band to name a few. The band and orchestra have proven to be the most frustrating because we have been fortunate to have such a program since my oldest first started there. Parents however have been committed to renting out instruments for the year(which is not cheap) and had to pay a $100 fee last June – for a service that the children are not receiving. Now some have opted to take the refund on that $100 fee because they have been it is unsure as to when the music program will start up – if at all yet this took some time and parents pushing for their money back which from what I understand wasn’t an easy task.
Our Elementary school had the open house cancelled for good, and our pizza lunches have been scheduled to start in a week, when originally they always start in the second or third week of September. Why did this happen? What does pizza lunch have to do with the teachers even though it is run by parent council and parent volunteers? Well there was concern because teachers may have to hand out the slices of pizza to the students. Really? Then there has been talk of the grade 6 graduation and the fact that it may not take place. This one I really do not understand. Grade 6 graduation (at our school anyway) takes place in the morning and during school hours so how is that an “extracurricular”?
Like I said, I feel for the teachers, particularly the ones who want to do more, but it is frustrating and getting harder each day to explain to the children why one elementary school still has most of their activities and ours doesn’t. Having no idea when this will end is extremly frustrating however, adding to that fuel is the fact that, according to our elementary’s school principal, the teachers have been under strict orders not to discuss this issue with students.
How has your school been affected and what our you telling your children?
Until next time,
Chantel,momof8crazymonkeys
My oldest are in secondary, and they haven’t had any cancellations of extra-curricular activities and all meet the teacher and interview nights have gone on as well. The elementary kids have had no sports, music, hot lunches, student council, to name a few. Some of the parents have spoken up to make a “plan B” for grade 8 grad, in the event that it does drag on into June. PTA discussed pizza lunches, and the plan is to have grade 7 & 8 students come to hand out pizza slices to the younger grades, to ensure that the kids still get their hot lunch events. We haven’t really taken up a discussion with the kids regarding this, but they are all very dissappointed to not be partaking in the usual events that they look forward to every fall. I think its really unfortunate that the kids are the ones losing out when the battle is between the union and the government – but thats a whole other can of worms that we don’t want to open here! 🙂
Cheers
so far curriculum night cancelled – but I just came from a one-on-one iwth my sons teacher and it was great…