My husband and I met with the school principal, Fr. F.,
who is also Marie's class teacher, today. We had several things to discuss, all
of which went well.
First of all, at the parent-teacher conference in
November she had mentioned that she would arrange for us to take some textbooks
with us to the U.S., so we wanted to find out if that was necessary for the
status of the children being exempted from school attendance. As it turns out,
no, it's not, and it was simply an offer on her part to assist us, if we wanted.
She repeated more than once that we have shown that we know how to educate our
children, she was simply making the books available if we wanted. We did take a
language book for Jacob because he wanted it, as well as a couple of mathbooks
just to be able to look through--I don't think we'll take those with us to the
U.S.
The second issue was about the "goodbyes" for the
children. It may be that the children return to this school in September (NOT
that that's what we hope, but we're a little wary of saying flat-out that they
won't...), but we don't want the teachers or classmates (or our children, for
that matter) to have that impression. We told her that, and that if, as we hope,
we have made a long-term decision during our time in the U.S. about the future,
we will most likely apply from the U.S. for exemption from compulsory school
attendance for the time we're back in Germany, based on the law that allows that
for temporary (up to two years) residence. Fr. F. said that she was not
surprised to hear that, and had had so far phrased Marie's leaving as "maybe" or
"at least" for six months for that very reason. Marie and Jacob will both be
having goodbye parties in their classes on March 3rd. We had imagined that this
part of the talk would be more difficult than it was, and it was interesting
having Fr. F. reassuring US that she understood!
The third point was relatively minor; we requested
permission to take the children out of school this Thursday to visit friends in
the Netherlands. We didn't expect her to deny permission (and in fact, not only
did she happily give us permission, she asked if we wanted Friday, too!), but
the situation is such that she has the right to deny permission, and if we were
to take the children out without permission, we could be fined up to 1500 Euros
(about $1800) a day per child. (Parents can excuse their children for up to
three days for illness without a doctor's note, so the majority of people have
no problem with simply calling in sick for such an occasion, but we never have
been the majority of people...)
I also felt it was important to express my appreciation
to Fr. F. for her cooperation with us and emphasize that our desire to
homeschool is less against school and more for our family. Although I was not
happy with everything at that school, for the fact that it IS a school, it has
been fairly acceptable. She said she understood that very well and appreciated
me saying that, and that she had enjoyed having Marie in her class and will miss
her, but agrees that we have shown that we can provide a more than adequate
education and she supports us fully! She even said that the biggest criticism of
homeschooling is that children will be isolated and unable to socialize
normally, and Marie is living proof that that is simply not the case. We then
gave her a booklet written by Jan Edel (a big lobbyist for homeschooling) called
(but in German) "Schooling at home: courage for new paths of education," which
she thanked us for and said she will read with interest, and I believed her.
Six more days of sending my children to public
school--Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday of this week (not that we would have
minded keeping the children home on Friday, especially BECAUSE of Karneval, but
everything they're doing this week is preparing for the Karneval celebration on
Friday, and Jacob is going as the Archangel Michael--his choice--so they're
going to school), and Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday of next week (Monday and
Tuesday are holidays).
Maybe I should start thinking of packing...we leave two
weeks from today!
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