Schools open on Fri Mar 18th.

Kathnora

As a primary teacher I have listened to a lot of talk in the media and from parents re schools making up time that was lost during the pre Christmas spell of bad weather. The school I teach in opened today following St. Patrick's Day. One third of our pupils were not sent to school today. Need I say more?

pooch90

My class was missing 8 kids and then a further one taken home early. Out of 30.
I couldn't feasibly do any work of note as I'll only have to re-teach it next week.... *sigh*

thesimpsons

it kinda makes a joke of the common holiday system though as every single school in my area was closed yesterday (approx 20 schools between primaries and secondaries) except for one.

Kathnora

I take your point on board thesimpsons but I was really trying to make the point that there have been many
complaints about all the time off that children had during the snow and demands made on schools to make up the time, yet, parents were able to choose to keep their children at home when the school was open. The same thing happens,of course,when children are taken out of school in May and June for family holidays.

thesimpsons

I fully understand what your saying - I speak as a parent of a kid in leaving cert year who has only missed 2 full days school since Junior Infants. I just don't allow days off unless they are sick and thankfully my 3 are rarely sick and all three have excellent school records. We don't do days off in this house for no reason whereas I find my kids friends regularly have days off after a communion/confirmation party, concert, match, holidays away, etc. I can however, see the point of some parents who might have kids in 3 different schools (as I do) and all 3 schools might take different days at mid terms, bank holidays, etc. Luckily my kids schools didn't take any snow days either.

mumof2

pooch90 wrote: »

My class was missing 8 kids and then a further one taken home early. Out of 30.
I couldn't feasibly do any work of note as I'll only have to re-teach it next week.... *sigh*

I know it was a friday which didn't help, but I would have thought that a teacher should feel that they can do the work iregardless of how many is missing, and that it is up to the parents to ensure their child(ren) dont miss out on school work

I sent mine to school on friday assuming they would be taught something anyway..........

rainbowtrout

mumof2 wrote: »

I know it was a friday which didn't help, but I would have thought that a teacher should feel that they can do the work iregardless of how many is missing, and that it is up to the parents to ensure their child(ren) dont miss out on school work

I sent mine to school on friday assuming they would be taught something anyway..........

Easier said than done. It's not that the teacher isn't doing any work but if he/she wants to move on to a new topic and a third of the class are missing in reality it means that they will have to go over it all again the following week as there is a sizeable portion of the class that do not know what is going on.

I'm a secondary teacher and we were in Friday. All the other schools in the area were off. I wanted to start a new topic in science with my first years and I thought most of them would be in given their age (A good few leaving certs were missing as they were out drinking the night before, a whole other story). Out of a class of 21, ten were absent. The reality of that is if I go onto anything too technical half of them will be lost next week, so I did some revision material and written work and introduced the basics of the new topic in chemistry.

mumof2

rainbowtrout wrote: »

Easier said than done. It's not that the teacher isn't doing any work but if he/she wants to move on to a new topic and a third of the class are missing in reality it means that they will have to go over it all again the following week as there is a sizeable portion of the class that do not know what is going on.

I'm a secondary teacher and we were in Friday. All the other schools in the area were off. I wanted to start a new topic in science with my first years and I thought most of them would be in given their age (A good few leaving certs were missing as they were out drinking the night before, a whole other story). Out of a class of 21, ten were absent. The reality of that is if I go onto anything too technical half of them will be lost next week, so I did some revision material and written work and introduced the basics of the new topic in chemistry.

I do understand your point, and revision is always usefull!:D