Three Little Words....

It is that time of year for the three little words that either bring a sigh of relief or a tear to the eye of parents all over the USA.  "Back To School" Whether you sigh, cry or cheer depends on your childs age, grade and temperament and maybe on the school your child is going to.  Many of us crawled to this moment on narcotics for chronic pain, while others said "NO!" I don't want them to go I cherish this time...and a few others fell somewhere in the middle.  

This year, my kids are both at a new school...and for the first time ever, they are in the same school.  "Sophie" is in Kindergarten and "Buddy" is in 3rd grade.  I was most concerned about "Buddy" because this would be his third elementary school in three school years.  He started in the school system at the tender age of just 3 because of his disabilities.  He had early childhood for 3 years before he went to Kindergarten and stayed at that same school through 1st grade.  By the end of that year, he wasn't doing well at that school and seemed to need a more restrictive environment.  He was moved to a school that was well known for it's disability services in the district, but also was a traditional K-5 school for over 600 children too.  We had some good and bad experiences there, which included the washing out of his service dog, a tragic situation that is still yet to be resolved.  However we are letting lawyers handle that while we get busy with moving on.  We feel like his not doing well at that school was partly to do with that situation and partly to do with some personality clashes in his educational team.  It is sad that such clashes turned out best solved by moving the child to a different school, but it was clear to me that no disciplinary action was going to taken for the things that went on, and if we kept "buddy" there for the future it was going to be bleak and full of more clashes.  On top of that, district restructuring for specialo education was underway with an initiative to move displaced special education children back to home schools, with a history making attempt to offer the same services at the almost 30 elementary schools in our district.  At first I had rejected this suggestion, because "Buddy" had been through so much already this year.  However when I found out the exact layout of his next three years of school, my husband and I talked it over and I agreed to tour the home school that "Buddy" would attend, as well as "Sophie".  I was surprised to find that I liked it, alot more than I intended to!

"Sophie" had been tested to determine if she would go to Kindergarten or 1st grade, if you missed that story you can read it here  testing.  The result of this testing was not entirely conclusive, some subjects proved that 1st grade would be better, and others suggested Kindergarten was the way to go.  All told, we had some tough decisions to make.  The answer came in the form of an unexpected opening in the Dual Language Kindergarten program offered at this school.  The concept is designed to teach spanish dominant children in their own language, gradually increasing English skills, while immersing English dominant children in the Spanish language.  Roughly 1/3 of the class are children from English only homes.  Another third are likely from Bilingual homes and the remaining third from Spanish only homes.  At the K level, the day is taught 90% in spanish and 10% in English.  At this age, the English dominant children catch on vary quickly and acquire the language from their environment the same way they learned their own language.  It was pretty amazing to see the first day of school Sophie's teacher point to her seat and say entirely in spanish to "sit down at her seat please" and she did it, without hesitation.  You don't realize how much of our communication is non verbal.  We are at the end of the first week and everyone's nerves are settling and "Sophie" is excited to be learning all the new things she is learning in Spanish.  Since she already meets all K objectives in her native language going into K, we really do not feel we have anything to worry about.  The program does all the regular assessments any K class does throughout the year, and if you think about it, shapes are still shapes, colors are still colors, the alphabet is still the alphabet, with a few added characters and 1+1 =2 no matter the language it is taught in.  The goal of the program is that each year the day will be taught more in English an less in Spanish, and that by the end of grade 5, all children will be functionally bilingual at an age appropriate level.  This will be so valuable to all the children involved.

"Buddy" is doing well and I honestly haven't seen him this happy at school in quite a few years.  He even has adjusted well to seeing me at school dropping off and picking up "Sophie" even though he is bussed in.  Everyone comes in through the same doors and he has surprised everyone.  He is not clinging to me and making demands of being torn between bussing or riding with me.  He indicated a clear choice of wanting to ride the bus.  He comes out of the building before "Sophie" each day, makes a beeline for me, hugs me, asks when Daddy will be home and then says "Bye Mom see you later" and gets on his bus.  The bus has to go to another school to pick up more kids before it begins drop offs, so he gets a nice long 45 minute bus ride even though we live only 0.6 miles from the school.  This gives me 1:1 time to walk "Sophie" home and connect with her.  Not too many parents are walking their kids from my side of the attendance zone, so the group of kids "hanging" with the Mom walking her child seems to be growing everyday.  I have a feeling I'll have a whole bunch of "kids" by the end of the year!  Today we took a little different route to stay with a shy and scared 5th grader who was feeling upset because she was the only child walking to where she lived and scared to walk alone.  She stayed with us and took a shortcut through our neighborhood.  I felt bad for her because she was expecting her Mom to show up and walk with her and the Mom hasn't been showing up.  You realize God puts you right where you are needed if you let him!