Saturday 20 December 2008

Week 16 - we limp to the end of term...

Monday – J got a very good mark for a maths test. More bouncing off the ceiling (from me, anyway), but with less energy, since I’m now rather tired… but no less elated. A friend has written to advise me that they are going through the same experience in another gemeinde in Kanton Zurich, with a daughter in Grade 4, and they have been told that her daughter’s marks are for “children like her” rather than marking her as if she is a Swiss child. I’m not sure of the situation with our two, but I still think that J's is a good mark. I need to remember to discuss all this with J’s teacher in January at our scheduled parent – teacher meeting. But in the meantime, I’m smiling. He could be floundering, but he isn’t – I’m not sure whether that says more about him or the system.

As the week progresses, they both get less and less homework – just as well, since they are now on their uppers.

There is some kind of playground spat involving C and J and some friends at some point in the week (I can’t quite work out what happened) and I am surprised and delighted with how J’s teacher deals with the situation: J comes home with two home made cards from his friends saying sorry and let’s make up or something like that. He’s very happy with how it’s been resolved.

More snow. Buckets of snow. In fact we could probably ski down the street if it wasn’t flat ;) C has a morning of iceskating planned with his extra German class but unfortunately it has to be abandoned as the bus can’t get up the hill to the neighbouring village to the ice rink. Shock, horror, unprecedented traffic chaos !!!!!! Hmm, maybe for 45 minutes ;) For those from the UK what this means is: one foot of snow - which would, literally, bring the UK to a halt and cause all manner of chaos, power failure and several old people dead from hyperthermia. Here, all the roads are cleared during the night but unfortunately the remains freeze under the ensuing blizzard so that the morning rush hour traffic is held up, and vehicles are sliding all over the place on the black ice under the fresh snow. People miss bus-train connections – for maybe 30 minutes. But then the next connection works and people get to their work place – up to an hour late (rather than after a day, or abandoning their journey and making their way on foot for 30 miles). By mid-morning the roads and pavements are all clear despite the continuing blizzard. It seems to me that in Switzerland extreme weather is expected, people know what to do and everyone just gets on with it rather than having a big drama just because snow fell. In Zurich the entire train network is running more or less as usual, with maybe up to a 4 minute delay (how dreadful !) on some lines. The problem – if there is one – is on the bus lines, where roads are full of slush and continually freezing, but the local authorities are dealing with it continuously. I doubt that the Swiss would let anything as minor as the geographical environment get in the way of industrious behaviour. How do you think they got to be one of the richest nations on earth, with one of the smallest populations and in one of the most physically difficult and vulnerable locations in Europe ? Swiss belligerence and a will to make their environment work for them and not against them, at any cost – otherwise known as Swiss engineering. Sermon over.

Other detatils from this week:


Tick jabs
Friday we have the bill for the boys’ jabs – approx CHF143 each for the first 2 jabs, which I expect to be reimbursed in full.


C sentence construction
My mother arrives and after 24 hours comments on C’s sentence construction, which had completely gone over my head. She’s not at all critical, just observant: he’s now using German sentence construction in English – “I also am hungry” – instead of “I’m hungry too”. Gosh – hadn’t noticed that at all. Must try harder.

And finally…..

Schulsilvester.
In a completely diva-like way, I was dreading this, and dreading the boys being late to school and paraded round the village like idiots. I don’t do mornings, so we had agreed that OH would take the boys to school and go straight to work from there. In the depths of my slumber I was dimly aware of OH getting up, then J getting up and showering and disappearing downstairs. Then silence (all this by 05.30).

At 07.15 light began to peep through the curtains and I became vaguely aware of some sort of commotion (kids laughing, banging drums, blowing whistles etc) on the main road, but nothing in the immediate vicinity of our house.

Hauled myself out of bed and got downstairs at 9.00am just at J arrived home – on his 10th birthday. C arrived 20 minutes later, having walked with a friend (yesssssssssssssss).

They had had a fantastic time. No-one had to wear the night cap or get walked round the village. All they seem to have done is played pool and other games, J got his hair dyed and C did lots of “turnen” – ie gym. They weren’t even in their classrooms, just the main school buildlings, and they appear to have had a well thought out and organised riot – and loved it. So – drama over.

Thanks for reading this far, and I’ll continue our blog in the new year. I hope you have a peaceful and happy Christmas.

Monday 15 December 2008

Week 15 - Wednesday - Friday

OH takes the boys to school and speaks to the hauswart at both schools. Unfortunately they seem to only speak Schweizer Deutsch (rather than Hoch Deutsch) but apparently are very pleasant and try to be helpful. But there’s no sign of the scooter.

Thursday C arrives home at lunchtime absolutely yellow and having been sick on the way to his final lesson of the morning. It’s not his week really, poor darling. So after shovelling some calpol into him I pack him off straight to bed with some peppermint tea. He wants to help with the birthday baking, but something tells me that's not such a good idea....

J has had a German test and got 4-5. He looks a bit fed up about it but I am absolutely bouncing off the ceiling with joy – I have never seen him work as hard as he is working here, and I do think his teachers are realising that and encouraging him.

Friday J comes home with a school-made diploma certificate congratulating him on his “excellent” improvement in the Kopfrechnen (mental arithmetic) – he has reduced his time very significantly. Fantastic. I’m really thrilled for him and with him.

Friday also sees C’s 8th birthday, and he manages to end the week happy despite the upset and sickness. His main present ? A desk, with all the trimmings - there is room for him to have one in their new bedroom. Yes, I know I'm beginning to sound like the over-anxious and over- achieving mother from John O'Farrell's brilliant satirical novel May Contain Nuts, but bear with me. C wanted a desk, so he could be just like his big brother, working in his own space and not at the kitchen table. I've not checked his maths homework for at least 2 weeks, as I'm honestly now confident that if he has learning issues then they will be detected and dealt with appropriately. And the boys do also thump each other, scrap, wrestle and fight regularly with the time honoured tradition of brotherly love, so they're not really both complete swotty angels. Honest.

Week 15 - petty thieving in the Swiss bubble

The Tuesday C arrives home late for lunch utterly distraught.

His last morning lesson on a Tuesday is music, at the school next door, and he had taken his hat, gloves and scooter with him so he could come straight home for lunch rather than have to go back to his classroom to collect them. So, having retrieved his hat and gloves from the bin where one of his classmates had dumped them (I’ll be keeping a close eye on this) his scooter had been stolen. Hell hath no fury like me when one of my babies has been wronged, so after trying to mop him up and make him eat lunch, we head back to school to try to find it. Of course it’s complicated by the fact that the incident took place at the other school rather than the one that the boys are at. And the boys are reluctant to ask for the Hauswart (Caretaker).

I feel like banging my head on the wall again. No sign of the scooter anywhere. I’m bloody furious - this added to J’s watch never reappearing from a couple of weeks ago. I see C’s teacher, who, to be honest, doesn’t seem terribly bothered about it. I am now trying very hard to stay calm in front of everyone. She tells us we just have to ask the caretaker next door, and I ask her to tell the class that we want to know who has taken it or we will be reporting it to the police. Think she understands that bit despite my awful German.

The bell goes, and C runs off to his lesson. So we’re no further forward with this, to my complete irritation. J runs off to his class, to join them for a field trip that is happening today. 2 minutes later he runs back to me again : they’ve left without him, he was supposed to be there at 1.15pm not 1.25pm. Bloody hell. He was there at 1.15pm – helping me, and I had my mobile phone with me, why didn’t his teacher ring me on that ?

We get home as quickly as we can and I check the letter from school. His class are visiting the water treatment works at the next but one gemeinde. J’s teacher has left a message on the landline ansaphone asking where he is. She has also left her mobile number, but it doesn’t connect at all. OH has the car, and it’s too far, too cold and too icy to cycle. So I take a deep breath and phone for a taxi, managing to order one in German. Luckily I have enough cash to get us there, and we get J to the field trip 45 minutes late. His teacher is extremely kind though, and has obviously rung back to school in the meantime, as she knows all about the scooter by the time we catch up with them. She thanks me for making the effort to get J to the trip and is very sympathetic, telling me that the petty thieving is an increasing problem. Well, at least we know that from a teacher. But I am now stranded in the next but one gemeinde, with no transport and C arriving home in 45 minutes. And his scooter’s been nicked. Marvellous.

I walk to the train station (narrowly missing a bus that would have taken me there) and get the connecting bus back to our village. I finally get home 5 minutes before C, who arrives back home a lot more cheerful, but there’s no sign of the scooter. What a fantastically constructive use of an afternoon, in the busiest, most stressful month of the year. Grrrrr.

Later that evening OH pops next door to ask our neighbours for advice on what to do. Obviously it’s an annoying situation, but there’s no point going over the top and we don’t want to be labelled the histrionic auslanders, even if that’s the truth… Apparently the next door school to the boys' school does have quite a problem with petty thieving: scooters, designer trainers etc. OK. But that doesn’t get ours back, and we can’t decide if we should report it to the police – is that only going to increase our insurance premiums ?

The bottle of Gordons is no longer winking at me, it’s actively beckoning.

Week 15 - Monday

Week 15 begins with C bringing home a really lovely piece of handarbeit that he has made: a hand made Advent Calendar, with biscuits and wood work. Only he drops part of it on the way home at lunchtime, not realising until he reaches the house, and is very distressed. I leave the two of them eating lunch and retrace his steps, finding the two missing pieces half way back to school – and luckily, they hadn’t been been run over by a car.

C’s German homework is beginning to appear difficult to me – he can’t manage it without help but I can’t help him. Luckily J works it out and between us we manage to muddle through it.

I bump into one of the neighbours and ask about Schulsilvester, as I’m still trying to figure out what it’s all about. She explains but it still sounds bizarre. So I look it up on t’internet, and this is the translated page:

http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&u=http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schulsilvester&sa=X&oi=translate&resnum=1&ct=result&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dschulsilvester%26hl%3Den%26rls%3DRNWE,RNWE:2004-40,RNWE:en

It loses a lot in translation (!) but I think the basis is that it’s a specific Zurcher tradition for the final school day of the year, and the last one to arrive at school that morning gets paraded round the village in a night cap. Wonderful – ritual humiliation, Swiss style. That will be why the letter (the one that freaked me out last week) was making some reference to not getting to school earlier than 5am. Both people I have asked about it have made reference to all the door bells in the village being rung by school children.

So it looks as if we batten down the hatches and disconnect the doorbell on that Thursday night. Bizarre.

Monday 8 December 2008

Week 14. December.

So, we are now into December, and it’s That Time of Year again. I’ve frightened myself stupid by looking at the diary and what I need to achieve in the next 3 weeks; right now hibernating until after Christmas is looking very appealing – it’s that or gin. Hibernating isn’t an option, and the bottle of Gordons is winking at me.

However, we have just had a letter from an old friend whose husband is in the British army and two years ago spent Christmas in Afghanistan: needless to say it’s a reality check. Added to this, we have several friends both here and in the UK whose jobs are on the line, and one of the Italian manufacturing plants within OH’s firm is shutting down for a whole month from mid-December.

So – enough whingeing about December and diaries. We live a lucky and blessed life here.

On the Friday of “Ustermart” I had been surprised to receive a phone call from J’s teacher, late in the afternoon. Oh no, I thought, what’s he done ? Absolutely nothing of course, he was in the house watching TV – I had forgotten that the teachers had been working for those two days. She wanted to know if we had a book of children’s Christmas poems in English that we could share with the class. Apparently there is a Swiss tradition of children reciting poems at Christmas and she wanted to do the same in the English lessons. Luckily we do have such a book in English so I send it in with J on the Monday.

They go back to school sufficiently reinvigorated after Ustermart for the final 3 weeks of term – 16 weeks in total. J comes home on the Monday with some songs to learn in German. At last – homework I can help him with. Some of the tunes aren’t very easy, and it makes me wonder how children whose parents can’t read music can learn the melodies at home. Perhaps, unlike in the UK, the Swiss educate everyone to read music ? We shall find out in due course, but if they do, good for them. It’s a useful skill to have – a bit like speaking 3 languages.

J has an English test and scores 3-4. He is understandably disappointed, and so am I, but I’m not cross with him – how could I be when he is working so hard ? Apparently it was some sort of listening comprehension and he thought it was American English. I hope this isn’t the norm: I hope that in Europe the default is British English rather than American, but we shall have to see. The test result is disappointing though because he is understandably tired now, and I don’t want issues like this to start to undermine his confidence.

On Wednesday C comes home with the news that his class had been granted “Keine Hausaufgabe” (no homework). For the previous few weeks his teacher had been awarding them a single letter from one of the two words in response to good behaviour as a class – and the two words had finally been completed. On the Thursday he brings home maths as usual, and I’m increasingly impressed by how neat and tidy his work has become compared with previously. He is also now able to complete maths worksheets independently, with a very high level of accuracy and confidence – this is a huge relief after our concerns earlier in the year.

For the whole week, J brings home increasingly difficult German homework, and I am back to banging my head on a wall in frustration, as I can’t help him with it and he appears unable to help himself. One of the pieces of work is a comprehension from his field trip – and it turns out that he had got the gist but not the detail : apparently the guide at the waterworks had spoken Schweizer Deutsch. He is quite down about it, as he had thought he had understood more than he had been marked as understanding – we shall see how the follow-on piece of work is marked. I could contact his teacher to ask her to cut him a bit of slack, but we have a routine appointment scheduled with her in the new year anyway, and I don’t want to appear pushy or difficult – I reckon they are the trained professionals and that they know what they are doing.

By the end of the week, however, I am at my wit’s end with the German: OH has been away on long business trips for most of the last 6 weeks and not back until late Friday night. Unfortunately for everyone around me, I go into meltdown on the Thursday night when both boys bring home a letter about “Schulsilvester”, which I can make neither head nor tail of. It seems to be about a school party at 6am (yes, really) on the last day of term – which happens to be the morning after my Mother is due to arrive from the UK, and also the day of J’s 10th birthday. I know the Swiss are early risers, but this is ridiculous. Who on earth has a party starting at 6am ? There are all sorts of things in the letter that I simply can’t understand about not getting to school earlier than 5am (as if that’s going to be a problem, I struggle to get out of bed at before 7am), not sending in eggs – or am I supposed to send them in with eggs ? And what’s with the sentence about door bells and fireworks ? Do they have an end of term party and then have to do a full school day ? If so, what kind of state will they be in by the time they get home ? What on earth is this all about ? I am now sobbing my head off in frustration. Why did we think Swiss schooling was a good idea ? Reality check completely forgotten, I am several galaxies out of my comfort zone and heading for gin induced oblivion.

Thursday 27 November 2008

Week 13 : Ustermart

Well, we’ve made it this far and the boys are bearing up. They are both extremely tired and now getting very ratty with each other, but I’m trying to be patient (not my strong point, alas) and keep telling them that they have some days off at the end of the week.

Sunday night it snows again, very heavily, so snow boots and no scootering (too icy) are the order of the day on Monday. They are so tired that when C accidentally muddles up his snow boots with the identical but different size ones belonging to a girl in his Klasse, all hell breaks loose and he telephones, horribly distressed and sobbing down the phone at me. J is sensible enough to be able to resolve the problem and get the pair of them home in one piece without a fight (either with the girl or with each other, which is a relief). OK, all shoes to be labelled from now. Lesson learnt the hard way.

J has his first field trip – to a local waterworks. He seems to enjoy it and seems to learn quite a bit about water sourcing and treatment. His late grandfather, a water engineer, would be proud of him.

Homework is taking ages for both of them. J loses his watch after gym on Monday and is horribly distressed about it.

It’s clear that they are exhausted, mentally and emotionally. Somehow we manage limp through to Wednesday, when to my utter relief they finish and have just one small piece of homework each - apart from the ever-present Schreib and Kofprechnen - which they complete immediately.

The reason given for the days off is “Ustermart” – which I understand to be an Advent market and funfair in Uster. Our gemeinde adjoins Uster gemeinde, so the school has the 2 days off whilst the teachers do training days.

Phew. Thursday to Sunday for some complete downtime.

Saturday 22 November 2008

Tick jab reimbursement

I said I would post again about the tick jab repayment if it happened: well, between the two adults, OH and I have been reimbursed for my jab and not his. I’m not sure why, it must be something to do with the different levels of excess on our premiums. But at least we got some of it back.

We’ve not had the bill for the children yet !

Week 12: Teacher's birthday

Monday is J’s teacher’s birthday.

Hurrah ! Even in Switzerland, this means “no homework” apparently. So J is thrilled, until Tuesday, when she gives them more than usual, he's then late home from school after having to stay to finish off some work from that afternoon, and works flat out until his choir practise. I go out to my own choir rehearsal at that point and leave them with the babysitter as OH is away on business, but when I get back she tells me that it had taken him ages to finish his homework and he had had about 5 minutes to unwind before going to bed. Having to do rote learning on the geometry obviously doesn't help, nor still practising the Kopfrechnen, but I am trying to press on and keep on top of the homework situation without actually becoming a Rottweiler. They have 2 days off next week for “Ustermart”, whatever that is. Potentially, if we keep the homework under control, they can then have 4 days off school work (Thursday – Sunday), which they both need, J desperately. It’s still nearly 5 school weeks to the Christmas holidays, and they are both at a very low ebb now with tiredness from the language immersion.

Perhaps not surprisingly, J wakes up nearly in tears on Wednesday, claiming he hadn’t slept well at all, and is exhausted. I could weep for him too, but I know that with patience and a lot of TLC we can get through this stage.

Thursday night we test the geometry, and he seems to have taken it in.

Friday morning sees the test. In Kanton Zurich the marking system is 1-6, with 1 being the lowest and 6 being the top mark. The class have all been told that they must score at least a 5 or they will reset the test until they do. She’s a tough cookie, this Friday teacher.

J is home at lunchtime, with the news that he got top marks and a very nice comment from the teacher on the test sheet. Huge relief all round – this has been a painful but useful exercise:

1 The fact that he managed to get the top mark is excellent for his confidence – he knows he can do it now.
2 It was good for his verbal and written German – and geometry !
3 Rote learning is exceedingly boring, but sometimes necessary, and if that’s what the teachers want, then you just have to shut up and do it. Fortunately it doesn’t seem to be expected the whole time.

Tuesday 18 November 2008

Geometry test

All week J has been preparing for a geometry test with his (rather strict) Friday teacher. His definition of preparing is reading through the 11 sentences describing shapes and then reinterpreting the German in his own words. He knows it all in English and knows what he wants to say, but I suspect his own definition is not what’s needed here. Apparently (this is news to me) the first test he did for her, he didn’t do very well. In fact he won’t tell me what mark he did get, so I’m assuming that means a 0.

Overall, he has settled into working extremely hard, and I’m both very pleased with him and also desperately trying to support him as much as I can without doing the work for him. Additionally, he’s had a rotten cold this week and has clearly felt quite rough.

Thursday night I check his geometry with him and I can’t make head nor tail of what preparation he’s done for the test. I suspect that the teacher was expecting them to learn the definitions by rote and then regurgitate them on paper in the test – but this is really his first experience of this kind of learning. I tell him repeatedly that I’m really pleased with and proud of him for working so hard and I don’t care what he gets in the test (this is true) because I know it’s hard for him, he’s working harder than ever before, and he’s at school in another language. I could never have done that. I’m not sure whether he takes any of this in, but it’s true and I repeat it several times.

I send him off to school on the Friday morning, fully expecting another disaster with the test, and I’m not entirely wrong. He has to redo the test next week. So we have a long chat about what was expected here – and it seems that the teacher was expecting rote learning, and for the children to literally write out 11 sentences exactly as they had been sent home with to learn the previous week. Deep joy.

So we agree that he will learn the sentences by writing them out, each sentence 10 times, 2 sentences per day. So far it seems to be working, and I’ll let you know next week if this approach has done the trick. Fingers crossed. I hate rote learning, but OH pragmatically points out to me that it will also help J’s German. It’s just such an unimaginative way of teaching.

Week 11. Kapitelnachmittag - any ideas ?

Not a huge amount to report this week.

Tuesday they had the afternoon off for “Kapitelnachmittag” – whatever that is. Kapitel afternoon ? Does that mean “go to the capital for the afternoon”, “capital punishment afternoon” or something else entirely, such as “absolutely capital, old chap, what what” ? I have no idea. All I hope is that they weren’t supposed to be somewhere else with their friends having fun, as they were at home with me doing their homework, boo hiss to Mummy.

There is a clue later in the day that it might be something festive, as I go into Zurich for rehearsal and see several wind and brass bands around town, all dressed up in rather sinister looking fancy dress. At one point one of the bands stops right outside the Fraumunster, where I’m in rehearsal with the Fraumunsterchor , and plays jazzy numbers full blast for about 15 minutes, whilst 80 singers in the organ loft try to rehearse a Cherubini mass. A slightly surreal experience.

Thursday - Besuchermorgen

Thursday also sees the besuchermorgen – and this time we attend as parents rather than terrified onlookers.

We go to J’s class first, and are relieved to see his name not on the naughty board……. He seems to follow what’s going on in class (maths) although is called out to explain something to the class and clearly struggles with the German. I hope this stage doesn’t last long for him as it must be very frustrating.

We had decided that we would go to J’s lesson first and then C’s, as C has English first on a Thursday – and where’s the point of us watching an English lesson ? I’d far rather see for myself how he’s coping with the maths, given his difficulties earlier in the year.

So we go to C’s class for the second lesson, and his teacher practically falls on me as we walk through the door “Frau Tylor, ZANK YOU! Zank you zo much for not coming to my Inglish lesson, I was zo nervous you would be zere.” I look her in the eye, shake her hand and say, very slowly, “I promise I will never come to your English lesson. Unless you want me to.” Poor lady, I had no idea she would be so nervous. The class splits into 2 groups with a teacher each for maths, so C’s lesson is his group of about 11 children and one teacher. That’ll be why his maths is getting noticeably better, then.

Coffee, gipfeli, a bit of chit chat with other parents and the head teacher, and we’re finished. The boys are obviously happy and settled – even though they are both at a difficult stage with the German. It’s a bit like that stage when they are very young toddlers and before they can string a sentence together – the frustrating business of waiting for the brain / language wiring to gradually connect.

C is beginning to get homework most days – usually extra German and maths, and I’m beginning to find the same problem as I had when J was still working at the kitchen table – he sits there silently staring at it and looking pathetic, gradually cranking up my blood pressure. Perhaps he needs a desk of his own too, as when I leave the room and do something next door rather than stand over him nagging like a fishwife, he gets on with it perfectly happily. Hmmm.

Turnips - or Rabeliechtli Umzug - but turnips is easier to type











This light festival takes place in many communities at the beginning of November. Children and adults carve lanterns out of turnips (Rabeliechtli).

A couple of weeks previously, C brought home a letter from school which I struggled to fathom. It seemed to be about pretzels and the turnip evening. OH filled it in and sent it back. There was also some information about the background to the parade on the back of the letter (the gist is lights and harvest and warding off evil spirits and St Martin’s day and being about 40 days before Christmas yikes) but the gist is all we gleaned I’m afraid. No information about it from Grade 4, so are they too old for it ? Ich verstehe nicht......

Tuesday C arrives home with two enormous turnips, and no instructions for what to do with them. Clearly Swiss mothers know exactly how to deal with this childhood ritual – bit of a shame about the auslanders then. So I SOS a friend who is very experienced at all this (well, this is her third Rabeliechtli Umzug, so she’s an expert compared with me), and these are her instructions:

“..cut off the top and remove the insides just as you would a pumpkin. When this is done, have some cake cutters / knives and make patterns or write their name on the outside, peeling off the skin which will enable the light to come through when there is a candle inside. You can either put a tea light inside and attach the roof ... Read moreback with strings. Do this by making holes on the bottom piece and then thread the strings (3 should do) through the lid peice (making sure it sits above the turnip) and then up about 15cm to tie them together as the handle. The other option is to make a hole in the bottom of the turnip and stick a candle through it so the lit piece is inside, and pop the lid on with a hole in the centre of it to allow the flame and smoke to escape.”

Thank you Sophie, I owe you a large G&T.

Last year’s parade had been held the evening I had begun my journey back to the UK to sell my British car, so I have no idea what to expect, although OH had effectively gatecrashed then with the boys – albeit without them having any turnips. So he has more idea of what to do, and, bless him, carves the turnips whilst I’m out at rehearsal.

On the Thursday evening, the parade begins and ends at school, and is led by a drummer. There are a couple of hundred people taking part. Every now and then we stop and sing a song. Afterwards, on the playground, there is a bratwurst and gluhwein stall. Quite what we were supposed to do with the pretzels – which C had brought home that day – I don’t know, apart from eat them, obviously. Only the boys have now decided they don’t like pretzels after all.

A lovely Swiss tradition, all the more pretty for the remains of last week’s snow, and here are some photos. And next year I’m starting with the turnips about 2 weeks earlier.

Grade 2 Schreibheft and fulli

C’s class (Grade 2) have now all been issued with a schreibheft (that’s the handwriting exercise book) – and drumroll please – a fulli (fountain pen). He’s very chuffed, and it’s a very nice fountain pen: it seems to be ergonomically designed and properly shaped with 2 flat sides, so as not to leave the child with cramped and misshapen fingers covered in ink. I think that's what they call Swiss innovation.

Vandalism

J comes home on the Monday with tales of “vandalism” at school. This strikes me as unusual, but then what do I know, we’ve only been there since August, and vandalism at our school in Manchester would have meant someone breaking in, smashing windows and making off with all the Macs in the computer suite – at the very least. In the case here, someone has apparently graffitied the school door with their “signature logo”, at both adjacent schools. But whoever did it is obviously a Swiss graffiti artist and used washable paint, as I go down to school with C later for his piano lesson, and there is no sign anywhere of any damage at all. How considerate !

Week 10 - friends repatriating

I’ve known for a while that the family of J’s best friend here would be repatriating, probably at Christmas, but had been asked not to tell J until the children of the family concerned knew themselves. They’ve now been told. I’ve been dreading telling J : he enjoys his friendship with the boy so much, and it’s a welcome relief for him when he’s a bit wiped out by the school-all-in-German thing. But tell him I do, and he’s very upset but surprisingly sensible about it – he knows from our own experience that you have to go where the parents’ work is. It’s sad for him though, and one of the drawbacks of the “international experience” – you might make a brilliant friendship, only for that person to have to move on very soon afterwards. And one of the reasons I felt that for us, likely to be here for a while (I hope) it would be good for the children to have the opportunity to go to school and make friends within a less transient community. C’est la vie, but that doesn’t make it any easier.

Saturday 1 November 2008

Week 9

I mentioned earlier that I would seek help for persuading the boys to join the gemeinde youth choir, which they have been very reluctant to do. So I contacted an old friend who is head of a music department at a prestigious public school in England. I sang in a choir directed by him for 10 years and also worked closely with him on the choir committee, and I know that his powers of persuading people to do things they are unconfident with are superb.

His answer ?

“Blackmail. Works a treat with teenagers”.

Ah, I thought there might be more to it than that, but obviously not. So, with this in mind, I have persuaded them to try the youth choir until Easter, with the promise of the colours of their choice in their new bedroom. Luckily they’re not at the teenage-everything-completely-black stage yet, so we settle on blue and red, with two walls in white as well to tone it down (it’s now finished and looks absolutely vile, but they are thrilled with it.)

Tuesday sees the first of their choir rehearsals. I am not remotely surprised when they both come home absolutely full of it, having thoroughly enjoyed themselves. See, Mother always knows best.

Kanton Zurich are having a fitness drive for children based on studies done at the University (or possibly ETH, sorry, can’t remember) and so Monday is Fitness for Kids day. They both come home with an information booklet aimed at increasing awareness of the need for exercise and eating and drinking healthily, and also a food diary that they have to fill in for the next few weeks. Yikes. Better get our 5-a-day up to scratch.

OH is the USA this week, and there are 3-4 letters from school which I’m struggling with, to be honest, but I don’t think they require action as such, just an understanding of the fitness plan. One of the letters is about Hallowe’en, and reminding parents to make sure their children aren’t unruly and delinquent on Friday night if they are out trick or treating. Having recently lived in a deprived part of north Manchester, where it wasn’t uncommon for us to wake up with a vomit splattered doorstep and broken glass all over our drive on Saturday and Sunday mornings, I can’t imagine anything less likely here. When I had gone out to rehearsal in Zurich the previous Friday night, the “yoof menace”, gathered to have a sneaky fag in the shadows of the Kindergarten up the road and drinking nothing stronger than Rivella, all said “Gruezi mitenand” very politely when I walked past. Startled at them being completely unintimidating, I had laughed inwardly to myself: how wonderful to live in a place where people of all ages greet everyone else with respect.

J comes home with a form I must sign to say that he had not handed in a test countersigned by me: the reason being, that he hadn’t understood that I had to sign it and then him hand it in. So I sign the test and the form with an apology that he had not understood the instructions; he later tells me that his teacher was fine about it. It sounds very fierce that parents have to sign a form to say that a piece of homework hasn’t been handed in, but it was a genuine misunderstanding on J’s part, and I do think that the teachers realise that instructions aren’t always understood completely.

Wednesday night it snows. Boy does it snow. Thursday we wake up with about 8” of snow outside, and the boys moan like hell about not being able to scoot to school – until they look outside and can barely contain themselves. I would like to "flip" this image so it's the right way up but I can't so sorry about your cricked neck.

They come home for lunch absolutely soaked and freezing cold, the entire school having had a massive snowball fight with the other school next door at morning break time. So massive a fight, in fact, that the gemeinde police had paid them all a visit…… J’s teacher tells them to come back after lunch with their ski gear, so they can play in the snow properly. Excellent ! You couldn’t do that in the UK without having to do a risk assessment first, by which time the snow would have melted and everyone would have given up and gone home.

Tragedy in Dietlikon

Tragically, on Monday in Dietlikon, an 11 year old girl is run over and killed coming home from school for lunch. On the Friday I happen to drive past the spot where the incident occurred – apparently on one of those nasty zebra crossings on blind corners. It is extremely distressing and my heart goes out to the bereaved family. I’m not going to get into a debate about the safety of children walking themselves to and from school, as to do so would be wholly inappropriate when a family nearby is suffering the tragic and dreadful loss of a child in what are, in Switzerland, absolutely everyday circumstances. However, I now fully intend to change my children’s route to school so that they’re not scooting or walking along the road frequented by the stone carrying lorries from the local quarry that drive too fast for my liking.

Week 8 - back to school

The children are very happy to go off to school this week, and I’m already feeling as if we’ve made huge progress in the short time they’ve been at school here. They are more confident, more independent, and, importantly, both happy and looking forward to seeing their friends.

We have a little problem at lunchtime when J is late coming back from extra Deutsch so C gets fed up waiting and comes home on his own, but I decide that they are OK to come home independently now rather than wait for each other. This is more for practical reasons than anything else: sometimes they have classes in the school next door so it takes one of them longer than usual to get to the school gate in the first place, there are times when J has to do his routine class chores after school, and also there are times when they have to finish work from that day before they are allowed to go. So it’s a waste of J’s time and energy to be running up to the school entrance from his classroom to tell C to make his own way home when C could be getting on with it anyway and walking with a friend.

Late in the week J receives a very cute little letter from his guitar teacher, with confirmation of his lesson details and the teacher’s contact details. By having his handy number – along with the email, address and phone number of all of the school teachers our children have, we are able to make direct contact with them in case of emergency and sickness. We also have a phone tree, with the contact details of everyone in the childrens’ school classes: in case of an emergency the teacher rings one parent, who rings the next, who rings the next and so on. Both teachers have sensibly placed us at the end, where we then ring the teacher and repeat the message back – a bit like a giant adult game of Chinese whispers, only conducted in Swiss German - which might as well be Chinese as far as I’m concerned. You can get into all sorts of neurotic debates about data protection with having this level of information about where the staff live and how they can be contacted, but quite honestly I think it’s just sensible.

Saturday sees J’s first guitar lesson at the secondary school. His teacher is a fabulous old hippy with a plaited beard (yes you did read that correctly). J comes home enthused about learning the instrument and his teacher. Whilst he is having his lesson I manage a simple conversation with the Musikschuleleitung, and he compliments me on my improved Deutsch. This is terribly kind of him and I’m very flattered. I don't think that my Deutsch is all that much better than it was, but it probably is much better than it was when I last saw him, which was just after I’d crashed the car and was barely capable of stringing a sentence together in English, never mind German.

On Sunday there is the concert given by the participants of the Musikschule camp, which had been held the first week of the October half term. I can’t comment first hand on this as I was taking part in a concert myself in Zurich, but OH took the boys and they all thoroughly enjoyed it. School children across the gemeinde of all ages who had taken part in the camp gave the performance, and the boys came home very excited about the possibility of being able to go on the camp next year.

Ticks & inoculations




During the holidays we have the second of our tick jabs: the third will be after another 9 months. No side effects this time, fortunately – both OH and I felt really ropey and tired after the first.

We also have the bill for the adult jabs – 2 appointments and 2 jabs for 111 CHF each. I guess there will be a final bill after the final jab. I send these off to the health care company and I’ll let you know if we are repaid (I’ve read somewhere that if you live in Kanton Zurich then you are entitled to the jab free but I’m not certain of this, and it’s not worth not getting inoculated because of the cost.). Not had the bill for the boys yet, if it works differently I’ll post accordingly.

I’m posting up an article about ticks sent to me by an old friend now living in Basle. The information here is Basle related, but the principle is the same.

Incidentally, a couple of weeks ago the school health service had asked for a record of J’s inoculations, so I had sent a photocopy of the relevant page from his UK red book and it’s now returned with the a standard covering letter about which jabs they need to have and a reminder that he needs the third tick jab in 9 months time. As far as I can work out, everything is in ordnung and there are no other diseases we need to be inoculated against here, but I’ll double check with J’s teacher next week at the next besuchermorgen.

Swiss schreib picture


Herbstferien: homework











OK, so with no disrespect to the Teletubbies, I was in Lalaland with the comment about them only having one piece of homework for the holidays.

But we did manage to have a real rest – a lovely few days in London visiting family and then another few days in Zermatt, which was breathtaking. In fact here’s a couple of pictures to wet your appetite for the Valais. It’s really really really really beautiful, and Zermatt itself is just gorgeous. But this is a blog about schooling, not our holidays so I won’t bore you with tales of raclette, fondu, the best Victorinox shop in the world ever (at the top of the Gornergrat bahn, in case you’re interested) the moonlit Matterhorn …..


And back to the homework. Yes, they both only had one piece of general homework, which they did and got out of the way immediately they finished school – the joys of flylady discipline kicking in there.

But as for the rest of it….. well, for starters there was the schreib (handwritting), which I realise I’ve forgotten to mention so far. J’s handwriting was reasonably good anyway – probably miles better than mine (not difficult) - but his Friday team teacher has said that he needs to do the proper Swiss handwriting. Now this is very beautiful but some of the letters are quite unfamiliar to my eye, so I probably won’t be able to read their handwriting within a year…… The teacher had sent J home with a handwriting exercise book a couple of weeks previously and had suggested that he did a page per day, which he has been doing. But the book is for Grade 2 and she had said that he needs to catch up, ie work through Grade 3 and up to the stage his peers are at in Grade 4 too, so he did a page of that per day. Each book is around 60 pages long and he needs to catch up by 2 and a bit years: it’s not difficult, and he can do this while listening to music, so that doesn’t feel too much of a burden.

Then there’s the Kopfrechnen – ie mental arithmetic, based, at this stage on a complete and instant knowledge of the times tables. J had come home early in September with a double sided laminated sheet of times tables sums to do, with a timer, several times per week. Intelligently, the teachers had also furnished the children with washable marker pens, so that the tests are actually physically achievable without a frustrating trip to Office World trying to translate pen blurb. So he had started to do this 3-4 times per week – they had also been given a marking sheet for the parents to sign, stating date, time taken over the sheet and number of sums incorrectly calculated. There are 90 sums per side, and the aim is for them to be able to work the whole side, accurately, in less than 3 minutes. So that’s a work in progress, which we do 3-4 times per week, and which we continued with during the holidays. Needless to say, my own mental arithmetic has also improved as a result ! Since the holidays he has now come home with a third sheet, which is division – but the same idea, 90 sums on one side. The results are incredible and very obvious: in September, the first time he did the first side, it took about 15 minutes. Today (1st November) the first side took 4 minutes. I've also now managed to track down a times tables poster for his room - at Co-op Bau und Hobby.

And then there was the Deutsch………earlier in the last week before the holidays J had come home with some “extra” Deutsch homework. It was incredibly difficult – I had no idea where to start with it, and OH – whose Deutsch is far better than mine – really struggled. It was a 12 page document, and in fact I was really quite annoyed that J had been overloaded with this – he didn’t stand a chance of doing it on his own, or with help, for that matter. But, on the basis that the best way to improve is to work at a high level, we manfully struggled through it, a page per day. It was only on the 6th day that J remembered to tell us that the teacher had said that it would probably be far too hard, and to only just try it, not to stress about it, it was aimed at Grades 6-7 and that we should just do what we could. By which time both OH and I were at our wits end. So after that little revelation we eased off, and he went back to school with it two thirds done, and his teacher said she was very pleased with what he had tried. Phew.

And in amongst all the homework we did have a rest, honest – whilst gazing in wonder at the Matterhorn.

Saturday 4 October 2008

Week 7 - Friday

J is so tired that this last morning is a real struggle. He looks shattered, poor lamb. He remembers another test he’d forgotten to tell me about and I shriek at him along the lines of “not another one ! That’s why you’ve got your desk, with your calendar !” But it’s times tables, so we run through the ones he needed to revise, and off he goes.

It's now fairly cold and threatening rain. Obviously we are used to this, this is normal summer weather in Manchester. C goes in late - I've got the hang of this bit now - wearing shorts. It's 9 degrees and he won't be reasoned with. They come home for lunch, the temperature has reduced to 6 degrees - and it's now hailing hailstones the size of grapes. Shorts ! Should I suggest he paints himself with woad ?

A normal day with no incidents to note other than that both of the children have been sent home with a sum total of one piece of homework for the holidays. So that’s great – they can both have a real rest.

And so will I. See you in a fortnight, and haben-sie eine schon ferien (OK I know that’s wrong but you get my gist)

Ciao

K

Integrated schooling programme








Sorry for scanning these the opposite way round ! Whoops.

All of this information, produced by Kanton Zurich in English, is incredibly useful.

School reports for secondary level


School reports for primary school level


After compulsory education






















Primary to secondary school transfer
















Information published by Kanton Zurich in English

Information about the school system for newcomers






















Published by Kanton ZH in English

Kanton ZH school structure plan


Does what it says on the tin

Holidays and Events Unique to the Zurich area




I was about to re-scan these when I realised that the actual pages are wonky. Sorry - but you can see the general drift (hahaha sorry, just realised the dreadful pun)

Thursday - another meeting at school

A couple of weeks ago I had a phone call from a lady in the village - I couldn't quite make out her role - asking me to come to school for a meeting with her and a colleague. Just us. Today’s the day, so off OH and I go at 6pm, wondering what it’s all about.

It turns out to be two representatives of the Schulpflege, who want to meet us to run through how the school system works in the Gemeinde. Luckily the lady who leads the meeting is Dutch, and speaks excellent English.

They have a sheet of information for us in English about the traditional Zurich holidays (Sechselauten, Knabenschiessen, Swiss National Day, Rabeliechtli, Samichlaus, and Drei Konigstag) together with information from Kanton Zurich in English about the school system. I’m going to scan these and post them up for general use as they are Kantonal. They also gave us a print out of information about the school in English, but I won’t post that as it’s school specific.

I will post all of these items separately, so you can skim / ignore / deal with individually.

Basically, they wanted to make sure that we understood how the system works, ensure that we are happy with how we’ve been dealt with so far (yes, thrilled), and ensure that we are happy with the children’s additional German allocation (a great big fat screaming yes). It seems that the Schulpflege board sits above the schooling board, so the points of contact for us, in this order, are:

1 Teacher – then if we are not happy
2 Head teacher – then if we are still not happy
3 Schulpflege.

It’s not a governing body as we would know it in the UK (I was a school governor for 3 years at our last school) nor is it a PTA, though there is a sort of one of those too I understand – and the name of which escapes me - sorry. I think OH might be more use on that, since his German is better than mine. If I were to join that I might be asked to do something sensible like go off and buy things for an event, so there’s every danger they’d and end up with 3 bottles of champagne and a pineapple when they’d actually asked for potatoes.

The meeting finishes earlier than we expected, so we slope off to the pub on the way home for a swift one. I can’t even begin to describe this place so I shall just say that it’s “local” and “individual”. But they do a good glass of wine, and we do all the necessary pleasantries with the locals before sitting down in a corner to quietly discuss our planned change of bedroom for the children. Is there conversation other than about children once you’ve had them ? Sometimes I wonder.

Alas our attempt at sinking into the background is blown out of the water when a boy and a girl who were also in the pub - presumably with a parent, since I didn’t see them with a stanger each - do the lovely traditional Swiss thing of going round the whole room shaking hands with the adults and saying good night. It’s just so charming and polite you want to melt. The little girl shakes my hand and says very loudly “Sind Sie Christoph’s Mutter ?” (long silence - I am speechless. Everyone else is also silent. It’s like that scene from American Werewolf in London when the two Americans walk in the “local” pub and all the regulars turn round and stare.) I say yes rather weakly, and wish her good night….. the locals resume their conversations. When we leave, the locals join in all the traditional “gute nacht” pleasantries perfectly normally.

I can’t stop laughing. Are we that easy to spot ? Oh well, it doesn’t matter, it was hardly intimidating.

Later in the evening J’s new guitar teacher rings to confirm his lessons, which will start after the Herbstferien - and in case you were fretting as much as I was, they will be early enough for us to still hit the slopes later in the day. Phew.

Week 7 Wednesday - Worterbuch

The Pons 2 in 1 Worterbuch that I ordered last week arrives. Brilliant ! I can order stuff from a German website – there’ll be no stopping me now (I must admit I was wondering if I had completed the transaction correctly).

Confusingly, since the website had a .de suffix I had presumed it would be delivered from Germany but in fact it came from Zug, with a bill in Swiss francs – 36.85 to be precise, but worth every rappen.

Week 7 - Monday

Well we're into the home stretch, and the last week before the Herbstferien – in British English, October half term.

I reckon there’s enough on the blog now to point people to it who might find the information useful, so I forward the link to the Swiss Schooling yahoo group, and also post a thread in the families / schools / health section of a well known forum for English speakers in Switzerland, which I have both used and contributed to up until now. Within seconds no exaggeration the thread is deleted by the moderator, with a very abrupt automatically generated message that “advertising your blog on the forum is not allowed” and “don’t bother replying to this message, if you have an issue then you must contact the moderator directly” (sic).

I wasn’t aware of their rules about “external” blogs, and the forum rules of conduct are at the bottom of the page, well out of normal eye range. I can’t make head nor tail of the blog pages on the forum and in any case why should I turn this into their blog when it’s mine ? I’m not prepared to duplicate the work of uploading it twice just so it has their tag on it.

To be honest, I’m stunned by the moderator’s action. The blog is being written specifically to help give people who are seeking information about how the school system works in Zurich the chance to watch one family go through the process in the first year. Reality TV if you like, but minus the celebrities and delinquency. Am I completely off course in thinking that this might actually be helpful to families with school age children in the Zurich expat community ? After all, I’m not peddling crack cocaine or personal services - though you might get a racier blog if I were. I might consider google ads – after all if I’m taking the time to write it, then why not get paid for it - but I will obviously filter out those I consider inappropriate – and I’ve not definitely decided to do this.

I wait 24 hours before drafting a disproportionately polite response to the moderator, who, lest we forget, managed to delete my thread within seconds of it being posted. To date, Saturday 4th October and four days later, I've not been graced with a response, so am clearly not worth even a disproportionately polite discussion of how this might be taken forward.

So, if you know of anyone seeking the kind of information that might be found here, please give them the blogspot address.

Thank you.

And it’s the forum's loss, so nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah.

Whilst I’m sitting in a stunned fury over this episode, I begin to receive emails from a number of people who have started to read the blog and find it useful.

So – to all of you from the Yahoo group who have contacted me – thank you, your words have encouraged me a great deal.

Monday 29 September 2008

Week 6 - Friday

C has been preparing a piece of German that he had to read. I’m not sure if he is supposed to read it off the overhead projector, the same as the other children (as they had done during the Besuchermorgen last June) but he comes home and tells me that he read it to his teacher in private, at her request. I’m very pleased that she has handled this with sensitivity - he could easily be embarrassed or open himself up to teasing by reading aloud to the whole class.

They finish school at lunchtime as the staff have a training afternoon (at least I think that’s what the letter said. I don’t think it was talking about an afternoon in the pub for them, but who knows ?)

With WAC homework, music practise and school homework, they are still finished by 1.30pm, with J working at his desk and C at the kitchen table - but me banished from the room. This is incredible - is there something wrong with the clock ?!

What is really reassuring – for me, having had the problems earlier in the year with C’s maths – is that C has 80 sums to do for his homework, he gets 75 of them right first time and instantly understands one particular concept that was like Greek to him 6 months ago. The maths teaching certainly appears to be both rigorous and thorough.

OH has also had the first salary payment without being taxed for the international school fees - he is on a local contract rather than an ex-pat one, and the school fees were a perk. Obviously we knew he was being taxed for the fees, but hadn't realised by how much………..

Week 6 - Thursday

Of course the only problem with J having a desk is that C now wants one, but unless we have any more brainwaves then he’ll have to wait until he’s in Grade 4 and they have separate rooms, since they share a room currently and there’s only room for one desk.

But J has, in a fit of generosity, offered C his desk when he’s not using it, so, this being C’s afternoon off, he takes himself off to the new exciting desk - complete with Winnie the Pooh DO NOT DISTURB sign – and completes his homework in record time instead of faffing around at the kitchen table. Hurrah !

J comes home with a very heavy English / Deutsch dictionary that his teacher has lent him, and I decide that rather than give himself back strain heaving this heavy tome back and forth from school, I’ll order it for him online and we’ll keep a copy here. It’s a fantastic book, really comprehensive, bargain at 16.95 Euro. At least, I think I’ve ordered it…….. http://pons.de/produkte/3-12-517836-3/

Week 6 - Wednesday - meltdown morning

J is half way through his breakfast when he remembers that he has forgotten about a handarbeit test on how to thread a sewing machine. He is very distressed, and I feel sorry for him, since he had hardly any time to relax last night after school and his homework. So we quickly practise threading my sewing machine, and I run through the (English) names of the parts.

He then loses his temper with me and starts shouting because it’s the wrong type of sewing machine, and I gave him the words in the wrong language. I then lose my temper with him, on the basis of:

Whose problem is it if he has forgotten about a test ? His, not mine ! I was half way through the ironing when he remembered about this, and I’ve not had my breakfast yet, but I’ve just taken 10 minutes to help him anyway. He’s got to get his act together.

And

Of course I don’t know the German names for the parts of a sewing machine, I can just about manage the supermarket run and that’s it. It’s a Norwegian sewing machine bought in England in 1989, with an English instruction manual. I can’t do better than that, he should be thankful that I have a sewing machine at all.

I just about calm down enough to tell him repeatedly to not panic about the test otherwise he’ll forget everything and get it wrong.

They leave for school, J crying but he has to leave otherwise he’ll be late and on the naughty board again.

I feel dreadful, as this has been brewing ever since his homework regularly started to take up to 2 hours a night, and 4 at the weekend. Dreadful for losing my temper with him, and dreadful for telling him to get his act together - he’s not to blame for his own lack of organisational skills. Then I have a lightbulb moment:

1 How the hell can I expect him to get his act together and get organised if I haven’t taught him how nor given him the tools to do it ?

2 Perhaps the time has come for him to have his own desk in his bedroom, so he can work in peace and quiet and without me telling him to sit down and concentrate every 5 minutes.

In my despair I turn to http://www.flylady.net/ for help on how to teach children organisational skills, and as usual her website has bucketloads of helpful hints. I print off the Student Control Journal for him. Reading through it is like manna from heaven - I know this will speak volumes to him in a way I never will.

Looking at the clock, I realise I can get a desk sorted out for him (we have a spare table on the balcony that’s not being used) and set up by the time they get home for lunch, so I work flat out to get the table cleaned up and moved into their room, nip down to bau & hobby to get a small table lamp and a corkboard, and some stationery bits and bobs from the Migros. I realise he needs a calendar, but it’s too late for the remaining months of 2008, so I print off September – December from Google calendars and stick them on the corkboard, so he can put the dates of his tests on the calendars and then he can be prepared for them in advance. He is a very creative little soul, but needs some help learning how to most efficiently organise and use his time (don’t we all), and the Swiss system encourages them to be independent in their learning and organisational habits from an early age - not very exciting to a 9 year old who wants to play James Bond all the time.

I’m happy with my morning’s work, and when they get home for lunch I send J up to have a look. He is thrilled, and continuously thanks me and tells me that he really wanted his own desk all along. Obviously I had been very slow on the uptake – I had realised that he would need one by Grade 7 but hadn’t appreciated that it would be such a huge jump to Grade 4.

Anyway, he’s chuffed to bits, and he’s also chuffed with the Student Control Journal, repeating “Mum, this is brilliant, this is really going to help me SO much”.

Re the test: it was OK. In fact, it went very well: he sweet talked the handarbeit teacher into letting him name the parts of the machine in English rather than Deutsch. So that’s a huge relief, but he’d better not make a habit of it as I don’t want his peers thinking he’s getting preferential treatment over them.

An afternoon at the WAC as usual, and J has one piece of homework to finish when we get home. He accomplishes this, in his room (with his very scary Winnie the Pooh DO NOT DISTURB sign hanging from the handle) in record time.

Hallelujah. I think we’ve made a breakthrough.

Week 6 - Tuesday

J gets home from school late, having been obliged to stay on until 4pm to finish a task from the afternoon lesson. He then takes a further 2.5 hours to complete his homework, at the kitchen table. Getting him to concentrate is proving a major problem, and I am beginning to resent having to supervise him to this extent.

Tuesday evening sees C’s elternabend, which I am dreading after the brainache evening we had for J 4 weeks ago. C’s teacher is very nice and throughout the evening continually corrects her own Hoch Deutsch. The evening is again a group presentation in the classroom, covering introductions, handarbeit (but at a much less scary level - I am relieved at the lack of pictures of 7 year olds with power tools,) language, maths and English.

The English teacher is the Friday teacher - who had to mop all the spilt blood the other week - and she explains the English learning scheme, which is rather cute. English is taught through a cuddly puppet doll called Ginger, who only speaks English, and, and judging by the colour of his hair and his outfit – checks – perhaps he should be called McGinger. But then, my mother always used to say that the best English is spoken in Inverness. There is a colourful poster giving the cross section of a big ship with about 6 decks and all the activities that can be found on board. I guess that despite the Swiss having loads of lakes and ferry trips thereon, a boat like this that takes more than 1 hour to reach its destination might be a novel concept. In fact it reminds me of the boat we used regularly to cross to continental Europe from the north of England via Hull - Zeebrugge when we were in the UK. Aaaaaaah, sweet memories.

One point of note was that children who live within a 1km radius of the school are not allowed to use their bikes to get there. I think this is because the bike shed isn’t huge by Swiss standards (though I must say it’s a darn sight bigger than the one at my secondary school 25 years ago) and they like to reserve the spaces for the children who cycle in from the 2 smaller outlying villages. Fair enough. My boys are happier to scoot anyway, and C isn’t going near his bike with his backpack on until he’s a foot taller, since he just can’t balance well enough.

This time we’re home by 9pm and a great deal happier than last time.

Week 6 - Monday

Well, we’re 6 weeks in. Time flies when you’re having fun….

C starts piano lessons. These are the lessons that had been arranged by the Musik Schule Leitung. Luckily it’s in his the hall of his school (rather than another school), at teatime. I take him down, and the teacher is very nice. C takes his old music books from which he was learning last year, and the teacher (whose name, I realise with embarrassment, has escaped me already, drat) also gives him a couple of sheets from another book that appears to be published in English. He doesn’t need me to get any other books at the moment.

C coming home with homework he doesn’t understand and hasn’t asked for explanation from his teacher is becoming a source of immense frustration for me, but we manage to struggle through it and I think it makes sense.

J’s class have had a visit from the dental nurse who, J tells me in a confessional tone, spoke to the class in Schweiz Deutsch, as if this is some kind of horror. So I presume from this that Schweiz Deutsch in the classroom really is frowned upon.

Thursday 25 September 2008

Week 5

Week 5 begins with a day off for Knabenshiessen, the traditional Zurich shooting competition for boys http://www.knabenschiessen.ch/?m=index&action=view_home

But C is still feeling a bit rough so we don’t go and visit. Maybe next year……

Tuesday they are back to school, and C is much improved. He starts to bring home homework that he can’t understand, which is frustrating. We’ve told them both repeatedly that they should ask the teacher if they don’t understand (and J does this happily), but I think C lacks the confidence to do this. I hope this doesn’t go on too long, as I’m really struggling to understand it myself at times ;)

The Director (Leitung) of the Musik Schule rings later in the week with news of the boys’ lessons. He is very charming and repeatedly asks me if I understand throughout the conversation – I think so……

C starts piano on Monday at school. J will have to have guitar lessons on Saturday mornings as they are fully booked during the week, and he will start after autumn half term. I hope it’s going to be early on Saturdays so we can still go skiing for the day in the winter (priorities !!). No matter, the important thing is that they’ve found them spaces. I want them to both join the junior choir too, but J is resisting, so I think I will have to ask for some help from musical friends with that one.

I’m relieved that it’s an uneventful week at last.

Week 4 Friday - C's latest tumble

Friday sees C lose his grip on the witch’s hat roundabout thing on the playground and fall off at speed, badly ripping the inside of his bottom lip in the process. Add to this a nosebleed and cut finger – and he’s a bit of a mess.

His Friday teacher rings me at 2.40pm and I dash down to school, without phone, purse or key for J (note to self – don’t do that again).

He’s badly shaken - as is his teacher since she’s been the one to clean up most of the blood - and I gather him up to take him …. where ? Hospital ? Nurse ? I haven’t the faintest idea what to do, quite honestly, this is the first time we’ve had an accident here.

His teacher – after explaining to me in English that it’s up to our insurance to pay for any costs incurred by this – recommends that we pay a visit to the Kinder doctor in the village. Luckily this is where we had the boys' tick jabs done earlier in the week, so they know us. On the way out of school I stop by J’s classroom and tell him to go home and wait on the doorstep for us as I’ve not brought a key for him (see note to self above)

We wait for about 20 minutes - I love Swiss healthcare - and the doctor says there’s no point going to hospital as they can’t stitch it where the flesh is torn. But it’s a real mess, and he’s lucky he didn’t lose any teeth. She prescribes some peroxide solution - I think - to clean round the wound after every time he’s eaten, and says he needs a weekend in bed and all his food liquidised.

So I get him home, then, as I hadn’t taken my purse first time round (see note to self – again), have to go out again to get the prescription made up and some soup ingredients. I’m not sure how we go about the prescription thing, but hand over the docket and am given the bottle in return. How to pay ? They take C’s health card and swipe it like a credit/debit card, so the cost goes directly to the health insurance. Whizzy, eh.

Luckily the weather is filthy, so a weekend on the sofa watching telly is all any of us feel like, and by Tuesday the next week he’s much better, poor little lamb.

Week 4 - Monday to Thursday

Not a huge amount to report this week…….

Got the first tick jabs done. For more information about this, please see http://www.englishforum.ch/family-matters-health/27647-ticks-forest-vaccination.html

It’s quite scary really, and I’m a bit alarmed that it took nearly a year of us being here and taking full advantage of the outdoors lifestyle before I found out about it – it would help if new residents were made aware of the dangers when they register, particularly as Kanton Zurich is rife with the little sods.

The problem seems to be that if you are asked if you’ve had all your jabs, then the answer is yes – because you probably have, but if you’ve lived in a non-tick problem country (like England) then you won’t have had this particular jab, therefore exposing yourself to risk, unwittingly. When I explained to both doctors receptionists here that we needed the tick inoculation course because we don’t have this problem in the UK, they both looked completely baffled – but then I’m not sure if that was the whole concept or just my German…..

Anyway, we’re on the case now. It’s the first jab now, another one in a month’s time and the final one about 9-12 months after that.

J gets a letter saying he’ll have 2 extra Deutsch lessons per week – his teacher has already told us that she doesn’t want him removed from the class for a large amount of time as if they did that would be difficult for him to keep up. He seems happy enough with his allocation, anyway.

J also starts to stay after school for a couple of reasons – the first being when he’s not finished a task in the time allotted during class and needs to finish it ….. and the second being when his teacher says they are allowed to stay on to do their homework until 4pm. They did mention wanting to start a homework club at the school during the brain-ache parents meeting in the second week, but I don’t think this is it, and I ain’t volunteering to help with that one.

The work that J brings home (Grade 4) is about the same level as the stuff he was doing last year in the international school, and is very structured. But they are seriously hot on presenting the work beautifully – which he needs to work on ;) and there is a great deal of it.

The work that C is bringing home (Grade 2) is also about the same level [or slightly easier – if your mother tongue is German ;)] and, again is very structured. I have no problem with this: from what I can see, they all catch up in the end, and at least my children have an opportunity for a little breathing space to get to grips with the language before they are accelerated again. After all, the language learning itself accelerates them.

Thursday 4th September - pillars r us

I’ve spent the week running round trying to make appointments. My phone German is rubbish, and I find it much easier to communicate face to face. I need to book appointments for the tick vaccination for both the children and us (more later), I need to try to find some music teachers for the children, and I need to book a dentist appointment for the children.

So I spend my time and energy going between doctors, kinder doctors, dentists and the music school, smiling and engaging eye contact, apologising sweetly for rubbish German and gesticulating wildly. I must be known round here as that loony English woman.

By Thursday I’ve managed to book the first in a series of three jabs for us all inoculating against the disease spread by ticks in the forests (good) and the dentists appointments for the children. Fantastic ! I can speak German ! I’m not completely stupid ! In my disproportionate euphoria at my small achievements I completely forget about the pillar in my blind spot where I’ve parked the car in the underground car park, and trash the passenger door and wing mirror. Again. For the second time in 8 months. Perhaps I am completely stupid. I manage to get home without any more incidents but take myself off to bed, bawling uncontrollably.

Later in the day I force myself to go to the Gemeinde musik schule and try to book lessons for the boys – I feel I have to, since the Leitung is only in the office for 3 2 hour sessions per week and if I don’t do it today I can’t get there until next Tuesday. Back to smiling like a madwoman and gesticulating wildly, but we understand each other, and he’ll ring me back when he’s found some slots for them.

Home, for a stiff gin. It’s a bloody rollercoaster, this life abroad business.

Wednesday 3rd September - lunchtime play

The boys decide they want to get back to school as soon as possible after they’ve finished their lunch and lunchtime homework, for play time. I don’t know if this is OK or not – are there other people to play with that early, or do most people come back in time for 1.25pm ?

I bike back with them one day to see, and they’re right – of course. There are several children in the playground. I’m just not sure if they are supervised.

The Klasse 4 proper rules and homework now start, and J is coming home with 3 or 4 pieces per night, 6-7 on a Friday, and up to 20 pages of a reading book in German each night. This is a bit of a struggle, as I’m trying to get him to do the homework in the kitchen in case he needs any help with it. But it’s difficult for him to concentrate and I find it very frustrating sitting down for so long watching him or being asked questions that I can’t – or shouldn’t answer, when I could be doing something else (like cooking - or blogging).

Tuesday 2nd September - the naughty board mark II

Tuesday morning sees J getting back on the naughty board……. albeit with about half the class. He had stopped to talk to a chum at the adjacent school on the way in, and, having left the house in plenty of time, had made himself late. So this is what they mean about being strict with punctuality (but at least he’s not alone).

I’m not sure what to make of this naughty board business – it seems like negative reinforcement of bad behaviour, but on the other hand, punctuality is an important discipline both in school and the workplace. Let’s be honest, the majority of J’s class will be in the work place in 6 years, and no one ever got a gold star for turning up to the office on time.

I’m beginning to wonder if we should keep a supply of finished, nice colourful pictures, to give to the teacher to get J off the naughty board, but then realise that perhaps that’s giving J the wrong message…….!

Another nice colourful picture, and he’s off it again, with a vow to leave the house 15 minutes earlier in the mornings. Phew.