Back-to-school night
The parking lot was nigh full, so I had to park by the playground. This meant that walking in to the school involved coaxing Gleek off of the playground equipment. “I’m not going to play.” She assured me. “I’m just going to climb over everything.” Never mind that this required Patch, who was jumping with impatience to meet his teacher, and Link to wait for her traverse to be complete. My cries of “No playground.” fell on deaf ears and I was left to decide whether to make an issue of the disobedience or to make allowances based on the excitement of back-to-school night. I let it slide. I probably let things like this slide too often. I need to work on that.
Patch’s teacher met us at the door with a scavenger hunt sheet and a box of crayons. Patch has spent the last five days telling everyone “I have a nice teacher.” This assurance was imparted by me when I told him about her. Now it is fact, just as his teacher’s name is fact. Patch carefully selected a blue crayon from the box extended to him. We then set about the serious business of finding the coat rack, the cubbies, the bathroom, and the parent sign-up sheets. At each stop, Patch would carefully fill in the box with his blue crayon. After we’d seen it all, Patch returned to his teacher to trade the crayon for a sucker, also blue. And we were done. Patch will get a more thorough orientation on the day he comes in for his kindergarten assessment. On that day, the teacher will have time to pay attention to just him. For now, I am just glad that he has the teacher who is organized and structured. Patch needs organization and structure.
Link’s class came next. Within moments of walking into the room, I knew that my decision to have Link switched to this teacher was the right one. The teacher’s face lit up when he saw Link. With a big smile and a firm handshake, the teacher said “Wow, you’ve gotten big! I remember you when you were in Kindergarten! I think I still have one of the pictures you drew.” This teacher was Link’s kindergarten class aide. Then he was the PE teacher for the whole school before he settled in as a fifth grade teacher. He fell in love with Link in kindergarten and still loves Link now. I can not do better than to put Link into a classroom where he is already loved. Not only that, but this teacher is a high energy, enthusiastic teacher as well. I think Link will have a great year. Fifth grade is US history, and who better to learn that from than a man who loves it so much that he participates in re-enactment groups.
We pulled Link away from his teacher because Gleek was ready to vibrate out of her shoes. Gleek has not one, but two teachers this year. The two teachers trade off teaching because one is a reading specialist. This is good because they’re going to need to team up to manage the class list they’ve got. Whenever I get together with other mothers who have kids Gleek’s age, we posit that there must have been something in the water that year. I’ve never met a group of kids that has such a large quotient of high-energy, determined, distractable, people. I know of at least four kids in Gleek’s class who have the potential to become behavioral issues if they’re not handled carefully. Gleek heads that list. Gleek dashed into the classroom, intent on finding her desk, but was instead lured to the reading platform with its beanbag chairs. She climbed railings and jumped off of the steps. She located her desk and made note of who else was in her class. She barely looked at her teacher and she did not stop moving. Hopefully she got it out of her system today and on Monday she’ll be ready to sit still. I greeted the teacher. Link had her years ago, so she recognized me. I did not try to give her a briefing on Gleek. There was no point this evening. The teacher was overwhelmed with too many kids and parents today. I’ll talk to her in either a week or a month. It’ll be a week if there is an Incident during the first week of school. The lack of an Incident means that Gleek is in angel-child mode and is probably the best behaved child in the class. Then I’ll have to wait for when Gleek has worn out the angel-child and has settled in, otherwise I’ll only get strange looks when I try to explain why my angel might need special attention. I’m really hoping for the angel-child route because it means that the structure of the classroom is working well for Gleek. If it is not working well, we’ll all know in very short order.
The playground was traversed once again on the return trip to the car. Again I let it slide. Sigh.
Earlier today I went on a solo trip to Kiki’s school. She got accepted into the advanced English/History class that we wanted for her. This required a complete re-shuffling of her schedule. Fortunately all the electives she wanted still fit. She is having a very eclectic year. Eighth grade is a good time for her to experiment with new things before settling in to take the classes she’ll need for college admissions. I was very pleased with the staff at Kiki’s school. Everyone was wonderfully kind and accommodating. Kiki is also going to have a good year I think.
So now we’re all ready. The starting bell on the new school year rings Monday morning.