Thoughts on mothers and Father's Day being celebrated in elementary classrooms?

@ChipmunkErnie But at the age of six, is "watch everyone make gifts for Father's Day when your dad left you" the best way to go about that? Keep in mind that teachers can be in trouble for not working towards an inclusive classroom, as well. And foster children may very well have NOBODY to write to. Is shoving that in their faces the best way to go about it?

@Lucyy It's not- as someone who works in a school, inclusivity with these things is always best. You have no idea what a kid is going through, or what their home life is, even if you've met the parents. A classroom with 20 other nosy, interested, curious kids who are making gifts for their father is absolutely not the time or place to make a child acknowledge that they are different from the other students in that everyone else has a father who cares about them.

@Lucyy I'm not sure -- but does pretending the situation doesn't exist doesn't seem so good either. Re the teacher situation, I have three generations of teachers in my family and am fully aware of the current PC movement in schools. I don't know the answer, but reality might be the way to go. Otherwise you have to band everything because someone might be offended.

@ChipmunkErnie But that's why inclusivity needs to be addressed, is it not? To acknowledge that there AREA differences, and that a child not having a father doesn't mean they need to be the only one sitting alone, not making a card? Finding a way to work around that and implement a system that allows that kid to be included isn't pretending it doesn't exist in my opinion, it's finding a solution rather than having a kid sit there silently and ACTUALLY pretending that difference doesn't exist as he hopes nobody asks why he isn't making a card. I would think an inclusive classroom would be the opposite of pretending situations like this don't exist, as inclusivity would acknowledge and work around such differences. It's more a matter of how to do it.

@OliverM I think your solution is a good one, if implemented correctly. Is that a school-wide thing?

@Lucyy It's meant to be school-wide, though some teachers are better at it than others. The school is rather traditional in most things. But for the most part it's implemented well, with teachers being told to provide alternative for kids without one or both parents. The variation is primarily in what exactly the kids do for such holidays. Since it's a boarding school, only some of the kids go home for weekends, and some even stay through the holidays (especially those placed with us as an alternative for foster care). So you have some teachers who let the kids create little dough thumb prints on a necklace or keychain to be mailed home or sent home with the kids at a visit (though you will always have some kids who give it to staff at the school instead, based on their situation), and then you have some teachers who prefer the kids write letters with a drawing or painting to be mailed, or even have them create a presentation that can be emailed. So there is some variation, and some things work better than others. It would be hard for the kids to make bigger crafts that can't be sent home in an envelope or easily stored, like you might see in a public or non-boarding private school.

@ChipmunkErnie By "PC Movement" do you mean being sensitive and caring about what others might be going through? Yeah. That's pretty twisted, huh? They keep that shit up and who knows? That could become the reality. And who wants that?

@Ynotisay Nope -- I mean people who will say things like you just said to sound superior and more caring than the rest of us. Because, of course, YOUR view must be the correct one and everyone else must agree.

@ChipmunkErnie Nah. Not superior. Just wise enough to recognize phrases like "PC movement" for what they are. Not hard. And I'm not alone in that.