That bloody school is make life hard at this time of year

genuinely don't know how parents cope.

Probably because they're not dealing with 30+ children, they'll just have a few, all that makes life easier! 40+ years of I can still recall my daughter coming home from Kindergarten looking very unhappy because she to be a donkey in their Nativity! Apparently she had got the gig because 'Your Daddy's very artistic, so he'll be able to make you a lovely donkey's head!

As the school calendar is usually publicised at the start of the year parents have ample time to make arrangements to take time off work if they are able to do so, naturally teachers are not able to attend the majority of events in their own children's lives.

After endless special days at nursery and infants, we chose a Junior School that had a Sausage Sizzle, a Christmas Lunch and a Theme Week. Nothing else. It was bliss. No green day, no odd socks, no PJs, no book day dressing up.

The Christmas lunch often has to be redone because people fill in the forms for the whole term expecting Wednesday to be a certain menu then get angry that it's the Christmas lunch. Some schools greatly discourage packed lunches or even ban them on that day so they need to edit the booking system. Christmas lunch is often more expensive too so the prepaid amount needs to be adjusted accordingly. I get why they do it but I'd expect a bit more notice from your school!

Mine is allergic to parsnips. One year they gave them parsnips and told them to not be fussy. Luckily mine had the sense to say it was an allergy. Sure enough — their picture was on the wall as having an allergy. Cue kitchen meltdown. Apparently mine half expected the scene from Monsters Inc to play out. The kitchen then had a major wipe down before presenting a plate without parsnips on it. Mine didn't have the heart to tell them they could've just taken the parsnips off the original plate... Of course this meant the Christmas lunch went seriously behind schedule 😂

Yanbu, December is an expensive month as it is, but we’ve also had:
school photos
christmas ptfa event
school-led fundraiser event
chritmas jumper day
christingle service
belated children in need event
odd socks day (charity contribution)
School christmas dinner (parents join)

Then we found out Friday night it’s D&T day on Monday, children to take:
seasonal vegetables
herbs
vegetable or cooking oil
apron
chopping board
knives safe for children to use
vegetable peeler

I love our school, it’s genuinely a really lovely school, but this month of all months I could have done without the extra expense let alone all the additional bits to think of / book time off for.

Eh, the teachers are the ones who want the hats made.

I'm a (single, childless) Performing Arts teacher and genuinely don't know how parents cope. The number of events we have (all the time, not just at Christmas) completely fries my brain and I'm the one organising them so I have no idea how all the parents follow my attempts at keeping everything straight! They generally seem to manage it and I think you're all heroes!

Just a couple more weeks of nativity-concert-disco-jumper-talent show-carol service-pantomime-carol singing-christmas tree decorating-musical production hell and it will all be over. Well done!!

Teachers have 25 hours a week to deliver the curriculum. I can't find any reference to hat making in the NC, nor can I find any reference anywhere to PTA dictating what teachers should do in that 25 hours.

I do agree with you that if parents or the PTA want hats, they can provide them.

@OrangeKettle the joy of arbor!

Not everyone wants to buy the teacher a gift though. I didn’t! DD sent a couple of cards.

I’m a school office manager.

We get complaints we don’t communicate enough.

We get complaints we communicate too much.

We get complaints we haven’t notified of dates, despite it being in the calendar online since last year, and in the newsletter weekly.

We had a complaint we aren’t doing enough fun stuff (every day for last week of term, there is ‘fun stuff’ going on).

etc etc.

Catering only told us last week of a special Christmas menu. The set up on Arbor was an absolute pain. I was liaising with Arbor. They weren’t sure what was wrong. Eventually we figured it out. But that took 4 days to sort.

Its an absolute pain!

“”being harassed by the bloody class rep for teachers gifts”” - don’t you realise that the ‘bloody class reps’ organising a collection for the teacher is saving you time and effort in sourcing your own gift at the same time as saving the teacher from receiving 30 Best Teacher mugs ? You seem rude and ungrateful.

My DC’s infant school is amazing, one letter with all the dates for the term sent at the beginning of that term. Everything on the white board outside the classroom and there’s a weekly newsletter with learning updates and a reminder of the dates.

One Xmas play, no costume needed, Christmas dinner needs nothing special doing, one Christmas jumper day and a raffle. Simple but enough nice things for the kids. The teachers are worth their weight in gold.

The Junior school is a nightmare. A termly email with the dates on is sent but half of them are inevitably wrong or changed.

I thought Class Dojo would be an easier way to keep up but it’s hideous, multiple notifications very day day for every little thing for each and every class (16 of them) and club, the calendar section is full of irrelevant crap so you can’t find the information you actually need. I don’t give a fuck about Year 6 Djembe club being cancelled or String Orchestra rehearsals. Why can’t it be filtered by year group?!

Its technically the same school but the difference is mad.

Well said. Having in worked in quite a few schools during my long teaching career, a complaint from some parents is often lack of communication. But when you’ve sent a letter, put it in the weekly newsletter, put on the school website, reminded by Dojo and told the child to remind their parent/s and the parent still says they didn’t know because they ‘…don’t bother reading any of that stuff’, you really wonder why you bother. (True story)
Life for schools would be so much easier if they weren’t expected to provide all of these events, lovely as they are. I bet there would be loads of complaints if they didn’t happen. Just think back to Christmas 2020 when none of these activities could take place and how sad that was.

I just treat items donated to the fair and the money i give for DD to go wild spending at the fair as part of my annual charitable donations, I'd rather fund local charities including DD schools, than 6 figure salaries for CEOs at large charities with track records of corruption.

That's a very standard pta thing and it's just a colour allocated to each class so if you are red you at most have to bring in a box of malteasers. And it's not mandatory in any way.
And yes all the money for the pta does come from parents but it does go back to the children!

Pesky fucking schools - how dare they try to do nice things for the kids at Christmas.

Nobodies saying do nothing, they need to do school Christmas celebrations in school time (including the prep), so families can do family Christmas celebrations in their time. If that means toning things down a bit, that is fine.

It's not a hard balance to find.

How was it done 40 years ago without quite so much hassle for parents? My mum didn't have all this nonsense in the 1980s and she was one of the few mums working, and there were still nice Christmassy things going on at school. Now nearly everyone works and schools have piled the pressure on kids and parents over the years. Something has to give.

Love the phrase 'working parents' when wanting to appear sooooo busssy. Many teachers will be parents too and are trying to balance their children's needs with those of the classes they teach. I wonder what would be the state of this site if schools did the sensible thing and did nothing at all for Christmas, especially the dreaded Nativity or other play.

They do this as inclusion - some kids don’t get parties - some don’t see santa - etc etc

I personally think the amount of time spent on kids missing lessons for plays, concerts colouring card making etc is taking away form education.

Parents need to step up!!

Oh yes, our school is doing that this year. To raise funds for the PTA I assume, which seems to have spent that money on installing a Christmas tree in every classroom. Nice? I suppose so. Essential? Hardly.

My magic ignoring powers are working overtime right now.

How hard is it to log in to parentpay (or whatever) snd select yes?

also make a bank transfer to the rep

both these things take 5 mins combined?

Teachers have 25 hours a week to task the children they are teaching to do various activities, including hat making. Or they can always give them a cheap Christmas cracker with the Christmas meal with a hat inside funded from pta money.

Working parents want the choice to use their family time in December how they deem necessary, not dictated to by others. Visiting family, seeing Santa etc.

I work 50% of weekends.

Have I read this correctly? You class a meeting that gave teachers an increased workload as 'productive'? If two parents don't have time to make one hat how on earth do you think one teacher has time to make 30? Your idea of who has the 'easy life' is somewhat warped.

It is in my classroom.