I had a couple of funny anecdotes to tell you earlier today.
B was delivering a random lecture on anatomy and informed me that the hip is a "soccer ball and pocket" joint.
And there was one hilarious moment when we were waiting to cross the border from Switzerland into Germany. M made some comment to me in English about the Chinese we were smuggling in the caravan. ???!!!
It turned out he was making an ill-timed joke about our crappy plastic dishes-- apparently he meant to say "China", as in fine porcelain, but his brain short circuited at the last minute due to an overload of sun and fun during our vacation. I'm just glad the windows weren't rolled down.
So the section of my brain which is reserved for Blogger was already brimming over with these stories when I left my class and went to pick up the kids from school. B had a field trip today and started bubbling over with excitement when he saw me. But the main adventure of the day had nothing to do with the park he went to.
When I dropped him off this morning he hopped out of the car as always, waved, and ran up the driveway to the kindergarten. Mornings are always hectic-- it's a mad dash from the kindergarten to drop S off at school and then get to my own class on time. I waved to B and another mother who was dropping off her kid and then drove off.
Not knowing that the kindergarten was closed.
As in locked. No grownups. ???
B tried the door and when he realized he couldn't get in he started to cry. Luckily the other uninformed mother arrived shortly thereafter. When she realized what had happened, she took B and her own son and dropped them off at another classmate's house to wait the 1 1/2 hours until it was time to catch the bus with the rest of the class.
I feel completely sick about the whole thing. I have read and re-read the information about the fieldtrip but there's nothing in there about the kindergarten being closed today until it was time to catch the bus. I guess we were just supposed to know. ??? Thank GOD that other mother showed up when she did!
I've heard about these kinds of things happening in elementary school as well, that a teacher will be sick and the kids will just be sent home whether the parent is there or not. This is one cultural difference that I'm having a hard time digesting.
You can bet that from now on I'm going to be walking B all the way up through the door to the kindergarten...
10 comments:
hmm that is a cultural difference. I think in Belgium schools are responsible for the kids during school hours. When they are on strike, there should still be some adults there to guard kids that cannot go home.
Even at highschool when there's exams in the morning and everyone goes home, the school had to remain open for the 3-4 students that had to study at school in the afternoon since they had nowhere else to go.
Makes sense. I don't know what the laws are here, but in practice it's very different than I would have expected.
My experience in Belgium was exactly like you described. There was always someone at school / kindergarten during school hours and even afterwards-- if for some reason a parent was late they could rest assured that the child would be kept safe and sound on school grounds under adult supervision.
In relation to the German parents of S and B's classmates I'm very overprotective. S mentioned the other day that he's the only one in his class whose mother picks him up every day and walks home with him. (and the funny thing is he didn't mind it.) The German kids apparently all go by themselves.
(I'm now realizing that almost all the parents I see waiting outside the school to escort their kids home are foreigners. Maybe only one or two are German. It really seems to be a cultural thing.)
I pick S up every day partly because I enjoy the fresh air and exercise, but mainly because I'm just not comfortable with the idea of my 7 year old walking home all by himself.
Sure he USUALLY looks both ways before he crosses the street and PROBABLY wouldn't hop into a car with a stranger but I'm not ready yet to take any chances...
Maybe when he's 25 he'll want to start walking home alone and then I guess I'll have to consider it... ;-)
I'm sure that somewhere on the note regarding the kindergarten field trip it said something along the lines of "die Kinder kommen erst um 10.00 Uhr..." "erst" can be a very important word on those notices.
Thanks for the tip-- those kinds of comments are helpful and always welcome!
The memo says:
"Starten werden wir am 13.06 um 9:00 Uhr von der Bushaltestelle gegenueber dem Kindergarten."
So I assumed that the fieldtrip would start at 9:00, but didn't realize that there would be no normal kindergarten activity beforehand.
I know, it's my fault because I misunderstood the memo, but it just scared me that my mistake put B in what could have been an awful situation.
All's well that ends well, I guess. I'm just so grateful that the other mother showed up when she did and helped B out.
That's one thing I have to say as well-- we were met with such negative reactions when we told people we were moving to Germany.
We were told that the Germans are so cold and uncaring and in general our experience so far has been quite the opposite.
Okay, if it's worded like that then I (German) wouldn't necessarily have assumed that the kindergarten wouldn't open up as usual. After all, some mommies have to work and depend on dropping their children off early in the morning. Which is also why the German mommies might not be picking their kids up from school - they could be latch-key kids who have to go to an empty house and wait for mom. When my son was in elementary school almost 100% of the German mothers in our class worked outside of the home, while the foreign mothers usually didn't.
German mommies care about their kids, too :-)
Wow, good thing it worked out OK in the end! I would assume that each kindergarten would have it's own rules about this type of thing, but if they don't tell you beforehand, how are you to know??I've run into this kind of situation SO many times when it's just assumed that you know the deal and you're left wondering.
As for schools - several years ago most of the elementary schools in Lower Saxony where we live switched over to the "verlässliche Grundschule" system - that means that there's a guarantee that your child will be looked after during school hours no matter what. In our case that was 7:45 a.m. to 12:45 p.m. But I don't think it's like that all over Germany yet. If the school isn't labeled "verlässlich" they can still send even the littlest kids home without any notice. I saw it happening when our oldest son was in the lower grades and it was quite worrying. At the secondary schools which start in 5th grade it's every man for himself and my kids need to have their own keys because I never know when they're going to arrive home. :-)
Anonymous: I am so glad to hear you say you might have interpreted the memo the way I did. I've been feeling like a really stupid foreigner.
And I would love to be able to work here-- did it in Belgium right up until we moved, but there the kids were in school until 3:30 so there was actually time to fit in a part-time job. Now they're out by 12 and I don't know how I'd fit it in.
And I'm sure you know it, but felt compelled to say it anyway: I am certainly not passing judgement on German parents who let their kids walk home alone. It's just a cultural difference that I noticed.
I think that the perception of safety is different and doesn't always reflect the reality. And unfortunately, coming from rural Flanders I've been influenced by a different perception of how safe my children are and how closely I should watch over them.
I don't know if one neighborhood / country is safer than the other but I'm still trying to walk that fine balance between granting my kids independance and watching them like a hawk.
I think the teenage years are going to be pretty nervewracking ones for me! :-P
Christina: Our school isn't so much "verlässlich" as "fahrlässig" in many ways. ;-)
Betsy,
I understood you :-)
And based only on the note alone I would have interpreted it the same as you did; the only clue that things were going to be different on that day would have had to be gleaned from conversations with the Erzieherins.
hmm I was wrong about Belgian rules: it must have been in rule applied by my school but not legally required:
(copied from www.vrtnieuws.net)
Leerlingen worden niet op school verwacht
ma 25/06/07 - De grote vakantie start dit jaar officieel op 30 juni, maar veel leerlingen hebben vorige vrijdag hun laatste examen afgelegd en worden vandaag en de komende dagen niet op school verwacht.
De leerkrachten moeten verbeteren en delibereren en dan zijn scholen niet verplicht om voor opvang te zorgen. (VRT) Voor werkende ouders is het dus nu al puzzelen en organiseren. Ze zijn niet echt tevreden met de gang van zaken.
Volgens het ministerie van Onderwijs zijn middelbare scholen niet verplicht om na de laatste examens nog activiteiten of opvang te voorzien.
"De leerkrachten moeten hun taken sereen en geconcentreerd kunnen vervullen. Daarom zijn zij niet verplicht om voor opvang te zorgen", zegt Mark Van De Meirsche van het ministerie van Onderwijs.
In de lagere scholen eindigt het schooljaar vrijdagmiddag. Ook daar zijn de scholen niet verplicht om 's middags opvang te voorzien, maar sommige scholen doen het toch
Thanks for this, Ellen!
Funny-- it may not be manditory but our school in Steenokkerzeel did it too. They were very reliable-- I always knew I could count on them.
Wow-- is school out there already?! Schools here don't get out until July 20th. But I think Baden Wuerttemburg is the last of the Bundeslanden to have their summer break...
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