Wednesday, November 2, 2011

What do other people do in this situation?

This morning the teachers at our kids' public school were taking industrial action, so classes didn't start until 11am. It's industrial action that I'm supportive of. I don't have any issues with the reasons why the teachers weren't working.

So I took the boys off to school just before 11am.

Because I'm not too confident yet with parking the big people mover in the smaller than average parking spaces at the front of the school, I dropped them off at the side gate and asked them to walk around the corner to the school front gate. Thinking that most of the front car parking spaces would be full up (as they usually are at morning drop off time).

They weren't. When I drove past the front of the school, the car parking was nearly empty. I could have easily parked the people mover there.

At the end of the day when I picked them up, the kids told me that in both their classes, only about half the kids turned up after the stop work action. So one of my boys spent the afternoon watching a movie. The other one's teacher did some one to one assessment work with each of the ten or so kids that were there.

So my question is: why wouldn't you take your kids to school after the industrial action was over? Aidan's theory was that it was because if parents had to take the day off work to look after their kids for the couple of hours in the morning, then they wouldn't bother bringing them in at all.

I don't get this. If I wasn't heavily pregnant and didn't have a toddler to look after, I would drop the big kids off at school as soon as I possibly could and go somewhere and have a coffee by myself. Or see a movie. Or go shopping. Take advantage of a few rare child-free hours. Or, in my case, at least reduce the number of children to be dealt with.

Obviously other parents don't think this way. Don't get me wrong. I don't mind spending time with my kids. But if the teachers are working (even if it's not for the whole day), then it's a school day. The kids go to school. Right?

And I even made them do their homework and music practice during the two hours they weren't at school this morning....


3 comments:

Wendy said...

I don't understand either. If it were a Monday morning, maybe, cause people might use it as a long weekend, but a Wednesday?

simone r said...

Yep. School day.

Helen said...

It's week 4 here and already Lucy is watching movies at school. I don't have an issue with movies at the end of the term, but it's not the end of the term.