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.