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.