Back to School

The school year has got well and truly underway. The supplies are in, the children are in too. 3-yo has started preschool, or “free school”, as she first called it, which is a bit ironic as it isn’t. It would be in the UK, but here it isn’t. I don’t feel we’re quite getting our money’s worth yet. She missed her second morning as she was violently sick (that’s vomiting, for my US readers) the night before. And she will miss her fourth morning, as it’s Labor Day. Still, this week’s two remaining mornings, she took in her own inimitable 3 year old stride. More about her another time.

The boys look like American school boys. It’s something to do with the Henman-length white socks above trainers and below Bermuda shorts. It’s more than sartorial though. It’s something about their bearing. Their shoulders are held a bit more squarely, pushed a bit further back. There’s a small bounce in their stride, and their arms swing a little more. It’s a confident gait, but not a swagger. They sound more and more like American school boys too. When you ask them a question, they don’t reply “I don’t know”, but “I have no idea”. And when I picked them up one afternoon, 10-yo greeted me with “Today sucked”.

Classroom pets have been an important theme of the first week. In 10-yo’s class, they have a rat. We can opt to welcome it home at a week-end if we wish. I wasn’t too keen initially, but having met the rat at Meet the Teacher night, I felt better about it. She wasn’t too vermin-like, and really quite cute (the rat, that is). The class voted on a name, and the rat is now called Oreo. She is dark brown. 10-yo said he preferred one of the other suggested names. He thought Elizabeth suited her better.

In 6-yo’s class, they have a leopard gecko. Geckos and rats. The pet/pest line is fairly thin these days, isn’t it? I don’t think the gecko has a name yet. Meanwhile, in science, 6-yo is learning about mealworms. Each pupil has five of them in a pot. He has named one of his “Longy”, because it is longer than its friends. I asked him whether the others had names too, and he went a bit quiet. “Can you tell the others apart?” I asked. “What do you mean, pull them apart? In half? That’s not very nice.” By the time I’d explained, the moment had passed, so I never did discover if the other four have names. I suspect not. The girl at the next desk has one called Tricksy, because it does tricks. She said to it “roll over” and it rolled over so vigorously that it rolled right off her hand. Wow. Only a week back at school, and they’ve already learned to train mealworms. Not bad for First Graders.

6-yo wondered if they are called mealworms because they eat a lot. Of course, the leopard gecko might have a different take on it. As his teacher laughingly explained to us at Meet the Teacher night, she has set herself up for some delicate logistics. The pots of mealworms being studied and trained by the pupils have to be kept carefully separate from the one containing the gecko food.

In 10-yo’s class, the teacher has a reward system based on coupons. You earn coupons for A+ work or good behavior, and when you have enough, you can trade them in. If you trade in a small number, you can get a sticker or a pencil. Larger numbers will get you candy, extra recess, or a night off homework. The top reward, worth 150 coupons, is lunch out with the teacher (she pays first time, you pay subsequently). This shows how different school is since my day. I would have died a hundred deaths rather than go out for lunch with the teacher. It would have been painful in the extreme, and the kind of thing one wouldn’t have wished on one’s worst enemy (who for many children probably was the teacher). I can still remember the dreadful embarrassment of bumping into a teacher in a shop or the street, and willing my mother with all my might not to stop and talk. I am pleased that for my children, a teacher is someone who you would want to spend time with outside the classroom. And as marketing types know, there’s nothing like the promise of a free lunch to keep the punters happy.

You usually have to wait till the end of the school year for prize-giving, but this time round, it has come at the beginning. I am proud to collect the following:

the Thoughtful Blogger Award from Missing You Already,

and the Nice Matters Award from three people: the Rotten Correspondent, Ingenious Rose and Missing You Already (again).

You can picture me, shoes polished, socks pulled up, tie straight, hair neatly combed, walking briskly across the platform, shaking hands with the Head Teacher, remembering to smile and say thank you, as rehearsed, and returning to my seat, awards in hand. In hand. Not on computer as jpeg file ready for easy upload to blog page. I'm hoping they will teach me that now I'm a Second Grader at blogschool.

Thank you so much, Mya, IR and Rotten Corres.