Reunión a la escuela OR Parent/Teacher Conferences

So Miss M has been in Peruvian school all of two weeks (mind you, of that two weeks, there have been 7 school days, 1 holiday, 1 wind day with no school, and 1 day classes were cancelled due to a transportation strike.)   And yesterday, the school told us they wanted to move her up a grade because she already has all the things in Año 4 down (numbers and letters, they have worked on 1 through 5 for the past two weeks) and more importantly, because a kid who signed up at the beginning of the school year but never showed up came in last week and wanted to start.  Keep in mind, we're three weeks into second semester and they haven't heard from this kid's parents until now.  :)   Anyway, we reviewed the curriculum (not that hard, outside of the fact that it's in Spanish which is the same problem she has now), found out there is another English speaking girl in Año 5, and M is just 3 weeks past the age cutoff for the school year anyway.  So, it looks like she is going to be moving on up.  Uniform.  Fortunately, the same for both grades.   Today, I had a reunión urgente (or IMPORTANT) meeting.  I assumed this was a parent/teacher conference 1:1 with her teacher, but it ended up being an all parents meeting entirely in Spanish.  Turn on your listening ears, K-girl.  Thankfully, Dave came along to the school and took the girls home so I was free to concentrate. An hour later, it wrapped up and then I had a few questions about things.  So, about thirty minutes after that (I let the Spanish speakers go first, knowing I would be kind of long), I headed back for home.   What was the meeting like?  Well, the first part was like a public service announcement about limiting our kids' TV, video game, and computer time and the dangers of overdosing on those.  Check.  We don't have a TV or video games and computer time is pretty minimal.  Next, the teacher talked about the importance of bringing your kids to school on time and picking them up on time.  School starts at 8am- please bring your kids in by 9am at the latest.  And parents who have been picking your kids up at 2:30 or 3:30 when school ends at 1:30?  Well, that is bad for the kids as they are hungry and tired and bad for the teachers who have enough work to do.  Check.  We get our kid there on time and it's never occurred to me to pick her up two hours late.   Then, the teacher talked about an upcoming all school event in a couple of weeks (I get the impression it's either a fundraiser or families contribute donations/buy things so the rental fee is covered).  Anyway, I followed well enough to sign up to donate a homemade pie (hey, some skills are transferrable- I plan to make an Apple Pie in the style of the United States.  Hopefully that goes over well.)  But I didn't understand the part about chickens and bingo.  Could you win chickens as bingo prizes?  As it turns out, no.  Each family is expected to buy 5 chicken meals at the event.  They cost 8 soles each (about $3 total) and so it would be about $15 per family for the event.  We've only got three and a half full plate eaters, so hopefully Dave brings his A-game.   A portion of Thanksgiving Pie-Fest 2011   Also, I learned that the kids need to wear their colored t-shirts.  We have a white t-shirt for her uniform and that's it.  I asked the teacher about that and she said I have to ask in the office.  Turns out they have 4 or 5 different colors of t-shirts which are assigned by a super special group of teachers who picks what you get.  Yellow, for example, is a yellow shirt but also the lions group.  This completely reminds me of Hogwarts and the sorting hat.  The special teachers were in a meeting when I stopped by the office, so we have to wait until Monday to find out if M made it into Gryffindor.  And then I've got another thing to go and buy.  At least the mom of the kid who is starting is buying M's next set of textbooks and swapping for the ones we already got for her for Año 4!  And she can take all the things I already bought up to Año 5, even though they are the wrong color for that age, so I don't need to spend the next week doing school shopping list round 2.  Just another day in the life.

 

 

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