What Do You Mean You Can’t Take Off 14 Mornings and 36 Afternoons for Your Child’s Preschool Graduation Activities?
Parents,
We’ve gotten some pushback about the preschool graduation calendar, so we just wanted to reach out, explain the schedule, and remind you that we are mandated reporters if we suspect that you don’t love your child enough to sacrifice your careers and livelihoods.
Obviously, your child will only graduate from preschool once — or, if you include all of the required dress rehearsals, seventeen times — and so we must insist that you make arrangements to attend. We will be rolling dice live on Zoom every afternoon to determine the time of the next day’s rehearsal, in order to give you at least 12 hours to adjust your work schedule. Based on our own work experience as teachers in a preschool that is open for five hours a day, this should be enough time for anyone to make appropriate accommodations.
We have tried to consolidate as many of the end-of-year activities as possible, but it turns out that each of the sixteen songs in the class’s final performance must be sung on a different day, due to the needs of our music teacher, Miss Sally, who has to pick up her own children from daycare every ten minutes. We apologize for any inconvenience. We also recognize that it may seem silly to have the graduation party on one afternoon and the graduation lunch on a different afternoon, but due to allergies, we are not able to serve food at the party, and due to a shortage of party hats, we are not able to have a party during the lunch, so these must be separate activities, spaced a week apart.
Do not forget about the celebratory teacher breakfast, the celebratory director brunch, or the celebratory parents’ association afternoon tea, and please bring gluten-free, dairy-free treats to each of those events, homemade in a commercial kitchen less than 24 hours in advance due to food service regulations.
We are aware that a few activities were missing from the initial end-of-year schedule we sent to you three months ago in an email with the subject line, “SPAM — PLEASE DELETE IMMEDIATELY.” Among the additions are our end-of-year storytime, art show, scavenger hunt, Thursday morning Hide, and Friday afternoon Seek. We will also be sending out a Doodle poll where you can sign up for a time for your final parent-teacher conference. All slots have already been filled.
We understand that having this many graduation events, scheduled with no advance warning, can be an inconvenience to parents who work, parents who don’t work, parents who have multiple children, or parents who remain sentient human beings in their own right, separate from their children. We remind you again that we are mandated reporters if we suspect that you don’t love your child enough. Three children enrolled in our school are already living in the gym, having been removed from their parents’ custody. There is room for up to nineteen more. And, no, you can’t volunteer. The only thing you can volunteer for is gardening on Tuesday morning. We still need six more parents to dig up everything the kids planted and throw it away. What do you mean you have meetings all day? Why can’t you come to our Preschool Prom on Wednesday at noon?
We know it’s hard to balance everything. I mean, we’ve heard it is. But surely you can miss a few dozen days of work for the sake of giving your child the best preschool send-off possible and helping them make memories that will last about a year until they forget everything about this time in their lives and move on to the pressing concerns of kindergarten.
See you in ten minutes for the surprise graduation season kickoff dodgeball tournament!
Your Child’s Teachers
