Elternabend für Alex

Tonight, Dennis had to attend a second curriculum night, this time for Alex.  I know I've said this before, but Dennis impresses me to no end, the way he's able to sit through an evening like this and come away with a complete understanding of all that is said.

It was a near thing, though: at the beginning of the meeting, Frau Ziegler asked the group of parents if they'd prefer to conduct the meeting in Züridüütsch (the Zürich subdialect of Schweizerdeutsch, or Swiss German) or Hochdeutsche, or high German.

Before Dennis could register his plea, one of the other mothers in the class raised her hand and asked for high German.  This made things difficult for some of the other parents, unfortunately: they struggled to remember the vocabulary, and their accent was almost impenetrable even though, in theory, every Swiss in the area studies high German starting in grade school.  But that may or may not have been the case a couple of decades ago: I don't know.

But Alex's class isn't expected to learn high German, not yet, although Frau Ziegler mentioned that she was thinking about conducting one class a week in Hochdeutsche, to help ease the transition into grade school, where the kids are expected to start learning Hochdeutsche in earnest.

The teacher opened the evening with having the parents each try to locate their child's self-portrait.  Dennis had quite a lot of trouble with this, for Alex's drawing style has changed quite a bit lately.  Although when Alex explained his picture later, it made perfect sense: he's snuggling on the couch under our blanket, with our blue and green pillows next to him.

And Dennis wasn't the only one who had trouble: after finding their kids' picture, the parents each had to introduce themselves and describe their kid, using the picture. Many of the parents commented on how they were surprised by the pictures, and that they were much tidier drawings than their children normally produce, or a of different style.  Or, alternately, they commented that their kid didn't actually look like a robot.

Much of the evening was taken up with a boring lecture by the Logopäde, the fellow who is in charge of assessing the kids in the winter and determining if they know enough German to advance to first grade.  Apparently this is a man feared and reviled by many expatriates.

Dennis says that there are a lot of complaints among parents at Google, in particular: they consider their children already behind because the Swiss system doesn't introduce academic subjects until first grade. The thought that their six-year-old might be held back another year from learning to read and math is intolerable, and this is the reason many, many expatriates choose private school, even though annual tuition for a single child at the Zürich International School is over $30,000.

Alex's teacher didn't have terribly much to say, apparently, apart from telling the parents that his is a very easy and well-behaved class. Dennis said that the parents were also friendly, and several introduced themselves and said hello.

Dennis also got to speak with Frau Jenny, Alex's German tutor, for a bit after class. He confessed to her that we don't really work with Alex on German at home, but she mercifully absolved us of all guilt: she said that it's actually important that we only speak English at home to Alex, because a child can only learn a new language if he has a firm grasp of his mother tongue.

While Dennis was attending to Alex's current education, I was laying plans for a few months from now. It just occurred to me, when I started the process of registering Joey for our cooperative preschool, that, on Mondays, when I'll be working in Joey's class, I'll need to be at the preschool from 9:00-11:30, while Alex's kindergarten runs from 9:00-11:35.  Depending on the kindergarten bus route, I could have as little as 7 minutes to make the ten-minute drive home to meet Alex's bus.

But I came up with an elegant solution. When Ella was in half-day kindergarten, she also attended an afternoon science class at a local church: it was a really fun program, with lots of arts and crafts and singing and play.  I wrote them, and Alex can have a spot on Mondays and Wednesdays in the class as well, after lunch.

So, my elegant solution: Dennis, who works just around the corner from Alex's school, can pick him up from kindergarten on Mondays and take him to lunch, at Google or elsewhere, and then drop him off at science at 12:45.

I'm simultaneously groaning at how scheduled and complicated our life is going to become in a couple of months, juggling the schedules of three children, and cheering that Alex is going to get to have a weekly date alone with his father. Dennis is looking forward to it, I know, and I suspect it'll be the highlight of Alex's week.