Gaonomics

Last week Tenby International School had their first sports day in the school. Unfortunately my daughter was feeling unwell that day and didn’t go to school, but I still have some comments about the sports day. I really like the idea of giving all the children the opportunity to participate in the sports day and that they were able to choose the events they wanted to do. Had my daughter been in school that day, I would have gone to see her, as all the parents were invited to watch their children.

Some parents commented on the march past and I suppose the expectations about the march past could be connected to what we were exposed to when we grew up. In Denmark where I grew up, we didn’t have any march pasts at all and just went straight to do our chosen sports activities and competed with our fellow students, so to me it’s not really that important that the march past is perfect and I think time could be better spent on other things that rehearsing for a march past. However if the sports day were held on a Saturday, maybe there would be time to rehearse for the march past, but how would the participation then be among the students, as asking parents to come in on a Saturday morning may be difficult. Then the school has to make it compulsory for the students and parents to come, but would everybody be happy about that, since most people prefer to be able to choose themselves whether they want to come or not on a Saturday?

Regardless of how Tenby is planning to organise the sports day next year, whether it be on a normal school day or weekend, the most important thing is that all the students get the chance of participating in the event, all doing at least one sports activity each, but it shouldn’t be limited to only one, but as many as they want or can do within the time allotted for the events.

I would also love to see other sports included like badminton, basketball, swimming, tennis and what else the school has facilities for, which is also how we did it in my school. It had to be a full day and the parents could help out with organising and managing the event, keeping records of the students’ scores etc., and everything could run concurrently, so more sports activities can be included in the sports day and the students can do more than one or two sports, if they choose to. The reason for having more types of sports involved in the sports day would be to cater for those children, who are interested in and good at other sports than athletics.

I think that could work really well, and if a March Past could fit into the picture as well with a cheerleading performance for each house, that would be even more wonderful.