No More Sitting On The Old School Bench

Mike will be at the junior school in September and with him go any hopes of attending another assembly. So yesterday, I saw him in the last school assembly I will ever have to go to.
I have been attending these school and nursery events for 15 years and I felt a mixture of emotions: happiness, utter joy, more happiness, mixed with relief and happiness. If that sounds mean, well perhaps you have been to a better class of assembly than I have, but mine have been mostly dull, life draining hours of boredom. Occasionally something accidentally amusing or interesting has lifted the mood, but only occasionally.

Yesterday's assembly,- which as anyone with a child knows is said: a ssem ber lee -contained all the usual stuff you learn to expect in these things, from confused children, to anxious teachers and the inevitable cock-ups.

Actually I’m not being totally fair I do enjoy some elements – especially the entrance of the Reception classes. Is there anything more wonderful than watching scores of tiny boys and girls, swamped in their two sizes too big school uniforms, wandering aimlessly about the hall wondering where all these grown ups have come from. Once seated, they play with their hair, pick noses, scratch bums and wave unselfconsciously at friends and family and strangers. These half asleep, half smiling wee things don’t realise that they have just totally upstaged the Year 2 class whose assembly this is.

One of the first rules of a good assembly is that electrical equipment must always be available and should either be broken or impossible to operate. True to form, the microphone used by the Year 2 children yesterday augmented their words not one bit, leaving parents and children straining to hear past the first couple of words: 'this term we ha.......’ Over the years however, one learns to guess what they're saying, and it's not that difficult, because the over-worked teachers generally go with the show them the work we have done in class format.

Apparently Mike's class has been doing opposites, and after each child had said a few incomprehensible words about opposites into the broken mic, they each held up a letter to spell that word. OP ITE! declared the letters dutifully held aloft by the class, inevitably the second P and O and the S's were round the wrong way upside down or under the foot of some daydreaming six year old; they never learn, the teachers that is.

At last there was a break from the torturous routine of whispering and showing stuff we had already seen at parents evening, for the children to sing a song. Up they all stood and the back row clambered on benches, so that they could be seen. Within seconds of the very tall child in the middle of the line losing his footing the domino effect had taken out the whole of the back row on the right hand side. Mike, standing safely on the left hand side enjoyed this as much as I and the rest of the audience did. This is the sort of thing you can usually only wish for; but now and again those kids come up trumps. Nobody was hurt, and so on with the show!

The children waited for their music cue and boy it came. The hi-fi system was set at the highest volume so that when the CD was set in motion, the first couple of notes were so loud the older children began to scream and the reception children were left stunned and startled like rabbits in headlights. It was too much to ask surely, I was getting a great last show.

They sang Our God is a great big God, which is a real belt it out number. At home we sing it as: our dog is a great big dog, but Mike kept his mind on the job and sang the correct version. He is mostly religious at the moment, but the cult of atheism will have him too, eventually. After this it was back to the monotony of whispering and holding up stuff. On and relentlessly on it went, with more straining to hear anything followed by something held aloft - a wolf made out of clay, an example of paper weaving, a camel and palm tree sketch - and each parent smiling and nodding reassurance at their own child, whilst suppressing a growing concern that compared to the other children their child was good at nothing.

Eventually it is all over, the class teacher can relax the contorted smile which has been in place since the start of the chaos, and her Year 2 class now speak loudly and clearly so that we can all hear them for the first time this morning. The new head teacher is perfect, she does no more than offer quick congratulations to the children and after another hearty round of applause we are all let off the hook. The old head teacher was sincere but long winded and left parents twitching to get away. His desire to keep the momentum going always reminded me of my Mother’s descriptions of attending our nursery nativity plays. Plays so short that the children would do two or three shows at a time to make up the 20 minutes. My Mother said that it took all her strength not to shout NO! as the keen young nursery leader asked the audience: “Would you like to see that again?!”

Mike bounces over full of pride and we decide that it was the best assembly ever, and not only was his spoken line the best, but his clay wolf would win prizes; after one more great big cuddle he bounces off happily to class and I can head to work.

When our older children put on assemblies at the inner city London schools they attended, you could count the parents in attendance on one hand. Out here in this well-heeled rural town, you have to get to an assembly 15 minutes early to avoid the crush of Mums and Dads and Grandparents. If it’s a nativity or summer show don’t bother showing up without a ticket and don’t ask for more than two. I do care that my children are happy at school, and now and again I like to cheer them on in their shepherds outfits at a nativity, or weep with them as they come 5th in the sack race or clap along during their rendition of ‘All the single ladies” at the yearly talent show. But in between these occasions I will be regularly pressured to help in the class, to help on a day trip, to help with reading, to help making cakes and then to help selling them at the spring fair, and on it goes – even the grandparents find a day set aside for their attendance. But I don’t need to participate in the whole process for my children to be OK, do I? Surely I am the person who they should see when they come home and want to forget about school, and school is somewhere where they should be happy, make friends and if they are lucky learn a little something too.