The Parents Meeting !

German schools and kindergartens have a Parents Committee which is formed by parents. The work of the committee is to facilitate smooth and right functioning of the school body and to help solve problems for school, parents or students.

Last year's parents meeting was a total fire affair when a lot of parents were present and they had cornered the school management rather like a pack of wolves hunting down a poor rabbit. We all know what happened to the committee after 6 months...
 Now the time for a new parents meeting! It sounded as exciting as a breadth stopping cricket match between India and Pakistan but no..!

Stf had done everything in her powers to make it as frigid as the Antarcticas!  As if the unfortunate dissolution of the parents committee, arbitrary cancellations of  the contracts if anyone dared to speak against the school management and immediate rustication of the innocent children wasn't enough, she even sent out two separate mails to all the parents telling them that Parents committee is "nothing important and it is only a procedure which need not be taken seriously and the parents are not supposed to work  in the committee at all. The formation of the committee is just a formality...."

So all the parents, at least all the old ones, knew that a committee, in this school, means NOTHING. Most of the parents hadn't even bothered to come. For about 70-80 students in our school, there were only about 25 people present as parents. From our previous group only Clt's mother, Bhv's mother and Fr's mother had come. From this year's group only Jr's both parents, On's mother and Mrn's mother had come. I noticed Mtn come in and take his seat in the group.

Stf started by introducing all the teachers. I was happily surprised that she addressed me rather dearly as "This is our xxx, the English teacher for xxx group. She is a very good teacher."
The introductions over, she repeated again that the school committee is not an important thing, and invited them to nominate names for the members. Nobody wanted to be a member. Mtn stood up and announced that he wanted to offer his name this time too. I truly appreciated this act of his and probably the others did too because we all clapped hard for him.

Then we left them alone to do the voting. When we came back the committee members had been chosen and Mtn had again become a committee member. There were others too but none from my group or Mk's group.

Only two three random questions were asked which Stf answered smoothly without getting the least bit ruffled and then the parents were told to go their respective classrooms to talk to their child's teacher about any thing they wanted to.
So I and Cl walked into our classroom with Mrn's mother, Fr's mother, On's mother and Jr's both parents at our heels where we talked to them for nearly one hour and then the meeting was over. It was really a cold affair.

While we were talking to the parents, Mtn came in. I was so happy to see him. I got up and congratulated him warmly and told him how happy I was to see him again in the committee member role. This is what we need and the school needs though it won't admit it. He was happy too. He had merely come to ask if we needed help with the mailing system which he had created last year.

I am deeply respectful of Mtn because he displays a different sort of courage, a different sort of fighting spirit, a different sort of practical optimism.
I fully understand the incense and the bruise which the others felt for being insulted due to which they quit. But Mtn not only was telling them not to quit but he himself didn't quit. They all had wanted to help the school, the parents and the children but it is ultimately Mtn's sticking even at the risk of some loss of ego, that is actually helping the school and all of us. This is real act of nobleness. He is undoubtedly a noble man!
Sometimes, an inch lost is a mile gained...!

Now, he will spend his next few days and personal time in intensively collecting new email ids to create the mailing system for parents and teachers of this school which we all need and nobody will even thank him and what's more, he looks like he doesn't even expect them to...!
Great work, Mtn! Keep it up..!!!

An Emergency meeting and Octoberfest party in our group!

Today there was an emergency meeting in the school at 8.00 am to discuss the parents Evening which we are going to have tomorrow. I couldn't reach the school so early. It has been decided that this year the meeting shall take place separately in each group and not all the groups together like last year because some problematic parents create trouble and in turn corrupt the new ones too.
So, first a presentation of all the teachers will be done together in front of all the parents, then parents committee will be selected by the parents from amongst themselves and then the parents can go to their respective group rooms to discuss the curriculum with the group teachers.

Today we celebrated the famous Octoberfest in our group!

The children had been instructed beforehand to come to school in special Bavarian dress. However only about four children (and they were all boys), wore the Bavarian dress which is a lederhose or embroidered leather half pants which has straps and halters and is worn with a check full sleeve shirt underneath.

We sang the famous October fest song and ate a snack of pretzel and butter and apple juice which looked like beer to me!!! That was when Mgt was unknowingly going to give Fr butter to which he is allergic.

After the snacks Cl made brown paper hearts which the children decorated with white and blue crepe paper the official colors of Bavaria and glitter glue. Then we wrote their names on the hearts with white ink which looked like sugar icing and even attached the string to make them look like a real Octoberfest heart. The real October fest heart is actually a hard baked ginger bread on which designs and names are written with sugar icing and people wear it in their necks.
It was a lengthy activity and involved a lot of work but as usual Mgt didn't help us with it. She just made one child make this heart and stuck the decoration right on top of the child's name so for a long time afterwords we kept trying to find out whose heart was it...!

Day after tomorrow, the school staff is going to October fest party after school. We all are so excited. Earlier I had declined the offer of joining them as I neither had the Bavarian dress nor I drink beer but everybody told me that all this is not necessary at all; My and Mz too don't drink beer and plenty others don't have the dirndls too.
Although cheap dirndls for 100 Euros are available too but there really is no point on spending so much money on something which I will never use again in life. 

Is Mgt sensing our dissatisfaction?

Yesterday Mgt was absent from school - and what a pleasure it was! Our group was quiet, well behaved, well disciplined and we managed them so well without any blunders or pee or poo accidents. I and Cl suddenly realized that we were so much better because she was not there.

Cl coyly admitted that she also got the same ideas as I that Mgt is after all not a good helper for us.

Today Mgt came and the usual thing started. When we started our morning circle time she disappeared with child (who had been crying and would have become quiet in less than a minute) and didn't come back until half an hour later. During the snack time the children were being given butter pretzel. She was going to smear butter on Fr's pretzel; I told her gently not to as he has allergy. She didn't hear me probably for the very next moment she picked up his pretzel and started putting butter on it. I was glad I saw this otherwise we could have been in greater trouble if he had eaten that. She was sorry and I was too that such a thing occurred. I am sure she hadn't heard me properly and this can happen with anybody. She also appeared a bit upset after that and I kept feeling sorry for her.

 During the toilet time we spoke to her that she shouldn't let the children go out of the toilet as they not only run and scream but we too get confused who finished toilet and who didn't. So the children were in and she was doing nothing to help us out with them, only chatting with the children. Cl had to go out for a minute and I was busy with another child whom I couldn't leave and in just half a minute Mgt took all the children out and they ran and screamed so much that few nearby teachers started complaining as it was sleeping time for the school. Even if it hadn't been sleeping time it is still against the general code of discipline. When I finally finished with the child and came out I was aghast to see that Mgt was lounging on the floor with a child in her arms who never even cries and was comfortably watching the noisy chaos. How could she do this when we had specifically told her not to?

We are wondering how long can this go on. It is a tricky situation  in which we are going to court trouble whether we keep silent or do something about this. She doesn't help us at all; when she does it creates further problem; when we tell her she feels hurt.

Today Mk was looking a bit upset. I asked him what was wrong and he merely said something has happened to upset him but didn't tell me clearly what it was.
'I understand. I am suffering from a bad situation too. And it is funny that children are not the only ones to stress me." I said.
"Are you talking about Mgt?" He asked instantly and I nodded silently.
"I know what you mean." He said. "I have worked with her for a few months and I know she is of no help. In fact she does such things that create further trouble. I could work better without her and was glad when she left me."

We are so stressed and overloaded...!

Our kindergarten world seems to have come to an interminable halt - in the toilets. It is toilet, toilet and toilet from the moment we enter the school to the moment we leave the school; and still then it comes to haunt us in our private time, family hours and dreams as well.

Last night I couldn't sleep at all and Cl told me she too had been unable to sleep and we both had been thinking incessantly about the unpleasant occurences of the school, in particular the toilets.

We are both so stressed, tense and fatigued both physically and mentally that we are unable to concentrate on anything else.

I realize it is all Stf's fault. She wants more money so she has taken in more children than permitted. There are 20 children in Mk and My's group but their children are older. We have only 12 children in our group. According to general practice in German kindergartens, only one new child joins at a time so that he gets plenty of personal attention and space to get assimilated in the group. The next new child can join only after at least 1 or two weeks.

Last year had been so fine! We had only 6 children when we started the group and every new child joined after 2 weeks so there was no tension and stress either for us, for the new child or for the group as well. And they were all between two - three years age group.

This time our group is more like a cow's herd- 7-8 children from  previous group and four new children who joined all together. To make matters worse most of them are on potty training without our consent so instead of getting familiar with our children, talking to them and discovering their individual character and personality and creating a loving bond with them, we are forced to think and talk and take them to toilets the whole time and quietening down the wailing new kids. Mgt is no help to us in any way, if anything she creates new problems. All our attention and time is being devoured by the toilet ritual and keeping the new kids quiet so we are unable to give any attention to the other children of the group. The whole time it is only Fr and his pee, Ksh and his pee, Mrn and her pee and "don't cry", Jr and "Don't cry", Sf and her pee and "Don't cry" and so on.

This year the parents are also different. Not at all the nice, courteous, gracious, understanding parents we had last session. We strive to communicate to them every little thing about their children's progress, write long welcome emails for them, toil to create their user group so that they could get information regarding school and our group but they don't even bother to appreciate us and say at least a "Thank you". If anything, they are always suspecting that we are not doing enough.

Next week, we have the parents evening! The same event when the new parents committee will be formed and parents will pose tough questions for the management to answer. Last year it had been particularly firy but this year I doubt it will be like that. Stf has been able to strike fear into all the parents' hearts by expelling the children of all those who dared speak against her. No parent will think of raising his head against Stf if he wants his child to be in this school. And all those parents who thought the world of me and Cl are all gone so there is nobody to speak in our favor either.

Till two weeks before I had not a cloud of doubt in my mind but now the prospect of the parents evening is striking terror in my heart. I am very apprehensive....

Mgt is ruining our group quality.

Today the moment I landed in school, I crashed into Fr's mother. She was very very angry..!

Yesterday why was he given diapers the whole day and still wet his underwear? He has also been scolded by the new teacher Mgt which is why he is very afraid to come to school now and he couldn't sleep the whole night because of his fear.
"I want only you to handle my child, not the new teacher. She is not a good teacher. She doesn't understand him the way you do. He should not go to her. Yesterday when I met her she said many unpleasant things to me also. I am very angry."

.....and I was not shocked.

Its true we kept him in diapers till the sleeping time but that was because we were waiting for him to poo. When he didn't till  a long time I took off his diaper but then he had to go to bed and given a diaper again. When he woke up I told Mgt not to put on his diaper; she didn't but blundered by not taking him to pee and so he soaked his underwear just when he was about to be picked up. His wet clothes were enough to make her temperature rise to boiling point; the rest of the damage was done by Mgt who told her unwisely point blank that Fr is not ready yet for potty training and needs to wear diapers again.

Mgt is making a lot of mistakes for our group...!
I like Mgt a lot and admire her for a number of personal qualities but this fact cannot be denied that her presence between myself and Cl is a discordant factor. She loves children a lot but has never worked with such young children before so her inefficiency hampers the group in not one or two but many respects. She disrupts the discipline in the group by encouraging the children to run and scream whether in class or in toilet; when we are handling the children on toilets she just keeps standing without even stopping them from playing with water and wetting themselves. When she changes diapers she drops their poo pieces everywhere without being aware of them. We are allowed to speak only German and English to the children - the German teachers speak only German and the English ones speak only English - but she talks Spanish to Spanish children and Italian to the Italian which is not a good thing to do since we aim to teach them English and German in school and not the children's mother tongue. Her way of talking with the parents is different - they get offended.
She treats the children like babies like carrying them in her arms all the times when they can too easily walk, run and jump, spoon feeding them when they are perfectly able to eat by themselves - result? Now many children want to be picked up in arms and carried even to the toilet!
She is also too slow. When she comes to help me wake up the children and dress them, by the time she wakes up one child and finishes his dressing, I get finished with eight or nine! The same for toilets and diaper changing.
Our strategies for dealing with different types of temperaments is also different. Both Cl and I accurately assess when we need to love and sympathize with a child and when we need to ignore so we can calm down and cheer up children when they are sad or unhappy by being gently loving and the deliberately attention demanding ones are ignored so they learn to behave themselves but Mgt doesn't let this happen; she keeps on loving them till they get too spoiled to handle.
Mrn is one such a spoilt girl. You look at her and she will burst out crying for absolutely NO reason. You ignore her and she is fine in a minute, playing and laughing just like any other kid. The same with Sf. Whenever she catches your eye she starts clutching her skirt, making a sorrowful, frightened, tortured face telling you she wants to pee. You don't look at her and she is fine - NO pee!. I wish Mgt would understand this and listen to me. She keeps cuddling and cosseting Mrn so much that Mrn cries the whole time. I told her many times she needs to be ignored for there is no reason for her to be so unhappy but Mgt doesn't listen.

Both I and Cl are afraid to voice our concerns even to each other. I don't like talking against Mgt as she is undoubtedly a nice person and Cl fears she can't talk to me against her as she is a nice friend of mine. And we both are too discreet - and afraid- to want to talk to her directly about these issues for fear of offending her. She is so much our senior. Even if she is absent for 10 minutes from our group our group is nice and on track. Her presence is ruining our quality on all grounds. 

Toilet woes !

So today was our bad day..!

It was raining hard outside - and inside as well!!! Children kept peeing in their clothes sometimes even twice as if they had just drunk a whole river. Mrn who is also on potty training pooped in her pants without letting us know and emulated Fr not only in producing pebbly stony poo like him but in also dropping several poo pebbles all the way from the classroom to the toilet. I wonder what do these kids eat that forms such  poo pebbles?
Changed and cleaned, she still couldn't stop crying and after shedding some hundred of liters of tears she still wanted to pee. She went and at the last minute couldn't undo the buttons of her clothes and peed a whole Nile river into her clothes, shoes and socks and still more and more and more until you could see a huge delta just minus the drainage into the ocean.

Then another girl, Sf who is a new girl, has a weird peeing habit. She just delights in peeing all the time even if she had been to toilet just five minutes ago. The parents agree she pees a lot but don't see anything unusual in it. So everyday she pees in the toilet at least 20 times and in her clothes at least once and still wets the bed whilst sleeping; today she wet her dress twice despite being to toilet a number of times. as if that was not enough she dropped a whole glass of water on to her clothes and had to be changed. Just 4 minutes before going to bed I made sure she had peed properly. As soon as she lay down she again wanted to go. I thought she was just being fussy and didn't let her go. Then 20 minutes later changed all the wet bed clothes, covers, her dress and all. I am going to give her a diaper from tomorrow during the sleeping time.

In addition to Fr, now Ksh has also started his potty training brigade from today. So before the first half of the day had passed by I had made so many trips to toilet that I was totally toilet sick. Not to mention at all that a new child Jr joined today who wailed so much that other five children decided to give him a stiff competition just to let him know that they could cry louder than he. And then I happened to tell Cl that Mrn was given a wrong slip by Mgt which is why she peed on herself - Mgt possibly heard me and became upset. I apologized to her many times and she assured me she wasn't upset because of this but I still suspect I had offended her.

While I was changing a child's wet clothes My was passing me by. I just casually commented,
"Oh, we have so many pee pee children today...I am tired."
"Ya," She smiled, "I hate children. Why don't you give them a diaper? I always give them a diaper."

Yes, I thought, that's why your children never learn anything. That's why H couldn't achieve a successful potty training and had developed such a great fear of peeing and pooping anywhere but in his diapers that for some time I was actually considering going to a doctor for advice.

Whatever, today I am bone weary, really really bone weary. Its a mercy that I love children and my students so much and have enough dedication , love and duty towards my work that even the disdainful tasks such as cleaning wet poopy children don't put me off much less repel or repulse me...

Finally Fr is on the right track now...

So Fr wears diapers in school and we keep running to the toilet every half hour so that he learns to pee only in the toilet and not even in his diaper.

Today on my own I decided to remove his diaper (after he had finished pooping in it in the morning) and kept him only in a slip the whole day so that if he wet it, it wouldn't be too much of pain to change or wash it and I would discover for how long he could control his pee. It worked!
We kept taking him to toilet just as frequently as before and he peed only in the toilet managing to keep his slip dry the whole day.

When his mother came in to pick him up, she was puzzled to see him in slip. I explained to her and she was very happy..!!!

From tomorrow we are going to follow the same plan of action.