Comment 81122

By Michelle Martin (registered) - website | Posted September 20, 2012 at 22:42:42 in reply to Comment 81121

May depend on the activity or board policies? Or possibly different at the high school level. My own kids, when in elementary school, have been coached by parent volunteers for basketball, volleyball, flag football, and teachers weren't required to be on site. CYO flag football, for example, takes place well after school on fields across the city, parents are responsible to get their own kids to the games and practices, and the whole thing is run by volunteers. These volunteers, of course, have to keep current police checks on file. Other activities, like cross country meets with wide participation, practices are held at lunch, overseen by teacher volunteers, and the meets are a day-long school field trip for the large number of kids who go. Really, these things depend on so many things, many activities have evolved differently over the years, interest from students waxes and wanes from year to year, supervision requirements differ depending on what a board feels is a liability...

Or even what teachers are available to do, and competent to do in terms of these optional activities. For example, a school won't have a chess club if none of the staff can play it. Last time my husband ran a chess club it was challenging to organize a tournament with other schools, not a lot of competition was available, it becomes impractical to do. Do you, then, as the parent of a chess-loving child raise hell if a school folds the chess club? Or do you learn the game yourself and play it at home? If parents can start demanding extra-curricular activities in principle, what's to stop them from demanding particular types of activities? DO we then say every school must run sports teams, and chess clubs, and science fair clubs and drama clubs and glee clubs and dance crews and debating teams and crafts clubs, when a single school doesn't have the facilities to accommodate all of these things in a week? Who gets priority, and why? You move into complicated territory when you insist that extra-curricular activities are essential to the school day. Which ones, then, and why?

For children whose backgrounds are less privileged than many of us here, there are other places to get those activities for low cost or for free-- the YWCA, the Public Library, Boys and Girls Clubs of Hamilton, Brownies, Scouts...

Comment edited by Michelle Martin on 2012-09-20 22:59:35

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