School Open House, or How To Visit Five Kids' Classrooms in 90 Minutes

School Spirit Week and with that comes the yearly Open House at school. Or as I prefer to think of it, The Stampede of Parents.   

Ah, yes.  It's that night when you try to time each classroom so that you don't miss anyone or you have to spend the 15 minute ride home listening to someone complain about how you liked the others better because you only met one or two of their teachers.  While you spend the drive trying to decide where you can safely dump them out and send their older brother down for them later. 


Well, visiting all teachers has failed miserably in the past as the gang has gotten older and made their way up to Middle and High School. So this year we decided to try something a little different, one floor at a time.  Yes, that's right.  Mom engaged her brain and decided that starting youngest to oldest or oldest to youngest only resulted in sore feet and angry kids, so we began with the first floor.  This meant we began with the youngest's classroom, since he is still in elementary and only had a couple of different teachers to meet.

What makes this particularly hard is that my kids are in a K-12 school.  With that comes the challenge of meeting every teacher and getting a tour of every classroom of four teens and a tween (God Help Me).  Some meet and greets border on rude when the teacher wants to explain their classroom policy and the, of course, perfect behaviour of the two kids they have in two different classes and you look at the clock and realize that teacher has exceeded their time limit so you have to excuse yourselves. (Did I mention this school only has 408 kids in K-12 and the teachers often pull double-duty, teaching more than one subject?)  Hey, before you laugh, may I point out that we have a Gymatorium too.  That's right, our gym has a stage in it.  I'll bet you're jealous now, aren't you?

 One poor teacher was trying to sing the praises of my perfect children when I pointed out that my kids were tightening the circle around him and pinning him into a corner.  I don't call them "My Gang" for nothing, you know.

 Now, for the best part of all Stampede of Parents Nights.  The Special Ed classroom.  As many of you know, I have an Aspie son (Asperger's Syndrome) and he receives services. Well, guess what is one of the things they do in his classroom?  Yup. They cook.  

 They choose menus and walk down to the store, buy groceries and make their own lunch - no cafeteria food for these kids.  Tonight they made us all sorts of goodies.  

 Okay, they didn't make all of these, The Best Teacher In The World, aka Annette, made some of the food and some of the Amish Mom's baked. 

Translation: we died and went to Heaven.

What sent us there?  Baklava. You heard me right. Someone made Baklava.  I can die a happy woman now.

 Before we met all of the teacher's, the evening came to an end and it was time to head home and I got to serenade my gang with whatever songs were on the radio. Hey. If I have to spend my evening at their school activities then they have to listen to me sing all the way home. What's fair is fair, right?

 Footnote: Check out Mandi's cool new Cheerleading jacket that she got tonight:

(No, I don't get very many pics of my kids without the family comedian in the shot.)

 

Pretty cool, huh?