The Beauty of School Meetings

How to accessorize for The School Meeting

One of the little pleasures of having school going children would have to be the school meetings.  Be they parent teacher meetings, First Holy Communion ones or starting school the following year gatherings.

I like to look on them as a little gift from the school.

A little gift to me.

I get to sit in a chair and have a chat with another adult for at least 15 uninterrupted minutes.  Parent teacher meetings are great!

All that’s missing is coffee.  Of course, I could bring my own.

The meeting I attended recently was the aforementioned enrolment meeting. 

Bearing in mind I have previously gone to two other meetings of the very same nature but I am going to gloss over that unimportant semantic.

It doesn’t matter to me that I already know about the uniform and where to buy. Ditto the school book list.   I am familiar with free play and why it is not advisable to give your Naíonán Beaga (Junior Infant) yogurts for lunch in a difficult to open lunch box.

I have been adhering to the “small treat allowed on Fridays” healthy eating policy for four years now.  The staggered start and finish times don’t phase me anymore.

I was good to not go. 

But of course I was going.  Forty minutes of me time was there for the taking. 

And as I sat waiting for the meeting to commence something I had suspected for a long time was cemented home; being the middle child in the family can suck but it also has benefits.

In Lovely Liam’s case, one of those boons will come home to roost in the guise of four friends starting in the same school, all of them in the same classroom. 

His older brothers did not have that advantage.  I am hoping this will be a great assist in helping him adjust to big school. 

Alas I got so excited about the prospect of free time I forgot this meeting was just the first of two; the enrolment one.  The shorter one.

My shoulders stiffened and I sat up a bit straighter as Muinteoir Sínead took off, speaking a bit faster than I was entirely happy with.  At this rate my forty minutes of free time was going to be shaved down to thirty. 

If I was lucky.

During the meeting, parents, especially those who are “first timers,” were encouraged to ask questions and I mentally urged them on.  Anything to stretch out the meeting a little bit.  I even toyed with the idea of asking a few of my own. 

Before I knew it Muinteoir Sínead was handing out the form to be filled in and it was time to go. 

Down the hallway and towards the front door.

But wait. 

What’s that up ahead?

A queue.  To the oifig.  Where we had to hand in our completed forms and get the birth certs photocopied.

Great stuff.  I joined in earnest.  And then realised, me the mother of two boys who already attend, had done her homework and the certs were copied on the way into the meeting.

Foiled at every twist and turn. 

Ah well, there’s always the meeting in May.  The long one.

School.  Some of the best days of your life.  Particularly when your kids go there.