I semi-accidentally spent most of the morning at the public schools district cross country race.
Olle qualified for this by coming second in the two-kilometre race for boys of his age group at school last week. The district competition was meant to be on Monday but was cancelled due to rain. This morning, which was still grey and showery, Olle said the district was on. I said I was sure it would have been cancelled. He kept insisting it was on. At 8.15am I rang another parent, who said he was about to take his kids to before-school care and would ring me from there. At 8.30am he rang to say it was on.
We rapidly left the house and walked to school but the competitors had already left the school enroute to the park where the races would be held. So we walked on to the park.
There we found a large group of parents (and of course kids and teachers) from the 16 schools which were participating. I immediately came across another lesbian mother whose son from a beachside school was there. Then I started chatting to a woman whose son is in Olle's soccer team. I saw our architect's son, who goes to another local school. I talked to the parents of the other boys who'd qualified from O's class. We saw a boy who'd left our school last year - turns out he'd moved to another nearby school. There was a teacher who transferred from our school to one closer to home earlier this year. And more kids from soccer. There was a mother I recognised from after-school drama. In fact, everywhere I turned were faces I recognised from children's sports and cultural activities over the past few years. When the placards say that "public schools are building stronger communities", they're right. As I hadn't expected to be doing this today, it was a pleasant surprise to be there having such a sociable time.
I'm always surprised by the big number of parents who attend these sorts of events. Quite often there will be two parents present, one (or both) clearly in work clothes. Often there's a pretty good balance between men and women.
In my childhood, the fathers went to work and the mothers turned up once a week to staff the tuck shop. I don't remember any parents coming to sports events and it was unheard of for parents to set foot in the classroom.
Flexible working hours is clearly a factor in parents being able to attend daytime functions, but the trend towards part-time work, contract work, self-employment and working from home must also contribute. On the surface at least, this appears to be a good thing. Some people, at least, are getting some work/life balance, even though I keep reading about increasing work hours. (Maybe half the parents who were there are working late into the evening to make up for lost work time...)
By the way, there were 64 boys in Olle's race (two kilometres) and he came 24th - not bad. He ran a good race and clearly felt pleased with himself.
This is almost a parallel of Tas's experience last month but he came only fourth in the qualifier rather than second. Still, he got to run in the cross country. they had to abandon the CC when it hailed - apparently the whold park was white as if it'd snowed! I'm ashamed to say I forget his exact placing when they finally did get to run it, he did quite OK but wasn't in the first places.
Posted by: Helen | Thursday, June 12, 2008 at 02:27 PM