School update
D got his first report card, or "interim progress report" today. All Ps, for "progressing in understanding" or something like that. The skills measured are things like letter recognition, being able to hold a book the right way, understanding the difference between capital and lower-case letters. In math, they’re focusing on pattern recognition and counting tangible objects.
The school has decided to hire an additional kindergarten teacher and have 3 classes instead of 2. The good news is that this means there will be about 14 kids in each classroom, with a teacher and a full-time aide. The bad news is that D is one of the kids who will be switching classes, and the new teacher is a total unknown. I’m trying not to twitch too much about it, particularly since D seems quite undisturbed. (The long NYTimes article about The Blessing of a Skinned Knee cites Mogel’s suggestion that parents "spend no more than 20 minutes a day ‘thinking about your child’s education or worrying about your child, period.’" It seems like a reasonable goal.)
Overall, the person having the roughest time right now in the family is N. He adores preschool, and has pretty much potty trained himself in the 3 weeks since it started. But it runs until 1 pm, and D’s school lets out at 2.35, and that pretty much kills his nap on preschool days. Yesterday he was so tired by the time I got home that he couldn’t stop crying enough to tell me what he wanted. (D eventually figured out that he wanted to wear shin guards, for no obvious reason.)
How’s school going for everyone else?
October 5th, 2006 at 11:38 pm
How’s kindergarten?
Elizabeth at Half-Changed world asked, How’s school going for everyone else? Here’s my answer, which was going to be a comment over there, but will have to serve as filler on the blog for the weekend, because we’re having guests
October 6th, 2006 at 8:41 am
My older is in preschool 3 days a week 1-4, but it’s also screwing up my younger’s nap schedule. He still really wants to fall asleep at 10 or 11, but we’re usually out doing stuff then, and I’d love for him to fall asleep immediately upon school drop-off so I could have an hour of clear thinking time a day, but it usually turns into some sort of cranked-out donnybrook instead.
Thanks for asking.
October 6th, 2006 at 9:01 am
Well, overall kindergarten seems just fine. Our biggest issue is that my son’s favorite playmate is no longer attending aftercare, so now we’re having an aftercare-hating phase. It’s boring . . . I don’t want to go . . . I don’t like the kids . . . etc and so forth. I’m happy to report that I’ve progressed enough in my parenting that my initial response is “hmm, we’ll see how this evolves” rather than overwhelming and debilitating working mom guilt.
I have to add, I’m awfully glad that he’s in kindergarten instead of first grade this year (with the weird DC/VA difference in cutoffs and his Oct birthday, he did kindergarten last year in daycare in DC, so he could have gone into VA first grade rather than kindergarten despite being kindergarten-aged). I feel like it’s giving me a breather on all sorts of issues like aftercare and sports teams and PTA politics and whatnot that I would otherwise feel waaaaay behind on.
October 6th, 2006 at 9:09 am
This year I finally have both kids in school — my oldest in kindergarten, my 3YO in pre-school. Although it does make for a long day for the 3YO, she isn’t melting down the way N seems to be.
Probably our biggest challenge is that the kids don’t seem to be getting enough exercise. They no longer have large slices of time to play on the playground, and when they get home from school at 3ish they both want to decompress (playing quietly alone, usually). After dinner they rev back up and are bouncing off the walls for lack of exercise. We’re working on it.
October 6th, 2006 at 12:53 pm
Elizabeth- What is D’s reaction to the activities during the day? Is he interested enough when the kids are learning something he already knows? My own experience was that the novelty of kindergarten was enough to outweigh sitting through things I’d covered in Preschool, but I was only there a half day.
October 6th, 2006 at 1:27 pm
How is school going for us? (Are you trying to ge us to spend our entire 20 minutes on the blog? 🙂
My daughter is going to an independent school; the school is about a 30 minute drive away, and it’s filled intense, kids who are eerily simiar to my own daughter. She loves it, including the carpool, which adds about an hour to her school day (at school, since she carpools with older kids who have a longer day). She refuses to let us drive her. She’s also way overscheduled (I am of course to blame, since she doesnt yet schedule her activities herself. But she begs me to sign up for classes). So starting school has felt enormously intense and overwhelming, and completely different from preschool. She feels that, too sometimes, but in general she is thrilled to be learning. So my goal in the rest of the term is learning when it’s too much, even when she seems to enjoy each thing individually.
What am I worrying about: 1) Is the carpool too much — does it make her day too long? 2) Is she doing too much? 3) Is she making friends? 4) Is this how the insanity on College Confidential starts, and if so, how do I make it stop?
bj
October 6th, 2006 at 2:56 pm
My girls are in preschool, but I’m already hyperventilating about school choices for kindergarten, which is not made easier by the fact that most of the parents at this preschool are dealing with substantially more money than we are!
I saw that “20 minutes” goal too– I hope one day I could actually stick to it, but I think being a teacher myself doesn’t help the issue.
October 6th, 2006 at 3:25 pm
My younger son is a junior in high school, and it seems to be going well.
I started calculus (after work) two weeks ago, and that’s also going very well.
October 7th, 2006 at 10:29 pm
My only child, 5-year old girl, started kindergarten this year. It’s in an economically diverse district, with over 10% of the children needing English language instruction and 1/3 on free or reduced lunch. It’s over 95% white. It’s an “all day” kindergarten, running from 8:45 to 3:10.
Let me start by saying that that L. LOVES school. She loves her classmates and recounts their exploits and exchanges with great glee. She likes all the teachers.
Now for my concerns:
L’s teacher spent most of the parent orientation complaining about the heating and cooling in the room. I arranged a conference to go over the curriculum, bringing a printout of the curriculum adopted by the board. Her response was something like “if that’s what I’m supposed to teach, then that’s what I’m teaching.” Hmm. . . The word on the street is that she is counting the days to retirement. She lets the kids watch TV in class. According to L, it’s been Franklin and the Berenstain Bears.
PE is only once every six days. Ditto for science and music. I’ve gotten no information at all about who teaches these classes and what they teach. There is the curriculum posted on the board of education website, but are they following it?
This is not an area filled with pro-active parents, so I’m very unusual here and not sure how to proceed. I want to hold the school accountable for doing its job, but I don’t know how to start going about this, short of demanding funding equalization, an audit of the books, or a raid on the state house. I also what to do what I can to help the school and the students in need.
The PTO is entirely focused on fundraising and its projects seem to be the only source of money that the school has for field trips and visiting presentations and performances.
I am volunteering one morning a week for a dynamite first-grade teacher who approached me while I was dropping L. off at the playground before school. (L’s teacher does not want/need volunteers. L’s teacher, unlike the one I’m helping, has an aide.)
It’s a whole new world for both of us.