Violet’s school year ends with Awards Day.
When she was younger, these were cute little ceremonies held in each classroom where every student got an an award for something basically made up and maybe one kid got an award for perfect attendance which, sorry, is impossible for a human 5 year old child to achieve unless their parents are sending them to school sick and that isn’t something that should be rewarded, but that’s just my completely right opinion.
Now the Awards Day is this bloated thing where all of the classrooms are basically doing the same sort of thing, but together. There’s 80 something kids, and we get to all sit there as each and every child gets a classroom award for something like “most polite” or “best dancer”. Then there are a few academic awards, and yes, the award for perfect attendance.
It is almost comically long.
A room full of weary parents clapping numbly away for kids they’ve never heard of until their own child’s name finally gets called….and then still clapping away because they can’t leave until it’s done. While we’ve gone to this thing every year, even Mark who is usually waking early after a night shift to do so, as we sat there this time I started to wonder how much anyone was really getting out of this- aside from the couple of kids that get like 5 awards each along with a personal intro from the teacher explaining why they are getting each award, this is clearly their time to shine!
The classroom awards are fun, but they were more fun when they were given in the classroom. Even Violet is pretty bored by the end of the hour long thing. I see why every year more kids and parents just skip it.
Violet’s award though was pretty spot on:
Anyway, Violet has summer school so she’s not quite done yet. Thankfully, summer school is just a couple hours of tutoring* a day for two weeks because she needs extra help with math to get ready for fifth grade.
Fifth grade.
When did that happen?
*Lily heard this as tootoring. Toots are farts. So Lily says that Violet is going to “fartering” and thinks she is hysterical every time. She is her father’s child.
