An Open Letter Regarding End-of-Year School Events
A special guest post
Editor’s Note: First, don’t panic: today is Thursday.
I know I don’t normally send newsletters on Thursdays, but I’m breaking my usual rhythm to bring you a special guest post from my friend , longtime internet person and co-host of the Shutdown Fullcast and We’re Not All Like This podcasts.
Ryan’s here today to speak on a topic near and dear to my heart this time of year: being massively overscheduled with end-of-year activities at your kids’ schools.
Here’s Ryan.
Dear School Administrator,
As we approach the end of the academic year, I hope you’re looking back with pride on the journey your students and teachers are about to complete. It’s always bittersweet to reflect on the growth and change that our children have experienced; truly, the days are long but the years are short.
Speaking of the days, it sure seems like we have a lot of special ones towards the end of the year, huh? Field Day, Art Night, Music Night, and various other cabarets and presentations (all of which seem to be scheduled at The Worst Possible Time For Your Other Kid Who Doesn’t Go To This School) really fill up the family calendar.
These events, while all wonderful, can be challenging for busy parents, which is why I’d like to offer a few suggestions for revamping them next school year.
1. COMBINE EVERYTHING INTO ONE
Rather than make me try to remember whether this Wednesday is the 1st Grade music revue or if that’s next Thursday and this week is “Paint Elsewhere: An Artistic Journey Around the World,” what if we just had one full day where we knocked out all the events? Parents will show up after lunch time for the Field Day events, and then we’ll head inside to see what the children have been up to in all their other pursuits. Their handwriting’s improved so much! Hey, look at them having fun on stage while they smack rhythm sticks together! Wow, they each made a comic book page that explains photosynthesis!! Everybody goes home for the evening with an armful of projects and the satisfaction of seeing everything these classes have been busy with.
Maybe that seems a bit much, and you’re not eager to host a four-plus hour event. I get it. We can speedrun the thing instead, in the style of a one-man band. At Field Day, as your child’s class moves from the sack race to the hula hoop station, they will perform the song they’ve been working on in music class, and they will be dressed in shirts that they designed in art. Parents will be handed question cards that they can quiz their children with during the events. Quick, run with this egg on a spoon and tell me some interesting facts about South America!
2. NEW OPPORTUNITIES FOR PARENT INVOLVEMENT
You probably think this means volunteering or bringing snacks and yes, sure, that’s all very nice and helpful, but I’m thinking bigger. Let’s make parents more than passive bystanders. Go grab a recorder and see how well you remember Hot Cross Buns!
Field Day, for instance, has a steady supply of excited grade school children. Many parents, especially the more online-inclined, have been fed a steady diet of hypotheticals involving such children. How many of them would it take to tackle you? What number would it require to beat you in a game of basketball? Exactly, to the student, how many second graders need to grab the rope and pull as a unit before you yield in tug of war?
In its current format, Field Day is not an appropriate place to answer any of these questions. But it could be, and I’ll absolutely sign a waiver so when I wind up destroying my back during one of these challenges, it’s not your problem.
3. JUST DO IT AT MY HOUSE
This is, admittedly, not a solution that makes things easier for the parent population as a whole, but if you held all of these events at my house, it would make my life a lot simpler. No, I don’t really have the capacity for the entire grade to show up. No, the house won’t be particularly clean (though I will feel bad about that). It makes no logistical sense to move these activities to a single-family home, and I’m offering almost nothing worth your while to justify the change.
I say almost nothing because there are two crucial things I can bring to the table.
4. CHIPS AND SALSA
“Say, wasn’t Art Night fun this year? Sure, it was a little crowded and the bathroom situation was a mess, but the chips!” That’s what every happy parent will say afterwards, because rather than forcing them to choose between feeding their kids at 5:15 so we can get to Art Night or waiting until 8 and then scrambling to figure out what the heck to do for dinner, we will have given them chips. (And salsa.) Chips and salsa may not a meal make, but it is food, and odds are it’s something kids and adults will be pretty happy to receive. Salsa’s got vegetables in it! We’re doing a great job!
Throw some chips and salsa into the mix for any of these events and you’ve made them more enjoyable for parents automatically. I would love a few chips to munch on in between explaining to my kid that no, you’re not going to win everything and no, the day isn’t ruined because you finished fifth in musical chairs. I will eat my chips and salsa discreetly on Music Night, pausing during the performance and making sure to wipe my salty hands before I applaud. I will hug my child and tell her how proud I am of the book report she put together as her final project, and then I will go have some more chips and salsa.
Thank you for your consideration and for reading this letter after my unfortunate diatribe re: Dress Like A 19th Century Industrialist Spirit Day. I have already started sourcing an Andrew Carnegie costume to avoid further friction in the future.
—
(@celebrityhottub)
 | A guest post by
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The one event at my kids' elementary that I'd keep separate is "international night." We had kids from about two dozen countries at the neighborhood school and people went all out -- food, tourism-promotion posters from the embassy, music. It was even better than chips and salsa.
The big concern about activities being at Ryan's house is if a wandering bachelorette party wanders over and ruins all of the children's activities. There is a betting line on that occurring though.