School Haze

School started here on August 27^th and I’m fairly certain that was just yesterday, but it might just as well have been a century. We got into a school with good test scores and class sizes, despite registering just 2.5 weeks before the start of the term. Ethan was assigned the most sought after teacher in the school and I made a friend with the mother of a boy in Ethan’s class. I should have known it was going too well.

The morning that school started we were informed that Ethan had been transferred to another teacher’s class. This was disappointing since Ethan had already met the other teacher and was very excited about knowing a child in his class. He settled into his new seat, though, and seemed to be ok with the change. Ian was literally bouncing while waiting in-line to enter his classroom. Several other kindergartners were crying and clinging to their parents, but not the Sniggett. He couldn’t wait.

Except for a small hang-up with California not accepting the Colorado IEP (Individual Education Plan) designation that Ian was given, the academic portion of Ian’s school life has been going very well. He’s been through all of the re-testing for his IEP and is continuing to receive speech therapy, literary cognitive support services (at this point that means one-on-one reading time), and occupational therapy. His teacher declares herself to be “in love” with Ian and praises his friendly, receptive attitude. Until last week she was always shocked when I laughed and told her she wasn’t getting the “treat of the full-blown “Ian Temper”.

Unfortunately, now, she has seen that he DOES have a temper. There was a boy constantly picking on Ian, and other children, during recess. The other children were running away, crying, or running to tell the teacher. Ian, however, decided he’d had enough. He turned around, clenched his little fist as hard as he could, and socked the other little boy right in the temple. I know, this is NOT the anti-bullying behavior we want to teach, but there’s still that part of me that wants to fist bump him and say “Way to stand up for yourself, son.” Sadly, Ian fighting back didn’t stop the behavior and the other child retaliated this past week. Now we have to do some serious mediation before recess turns into an all-out brawl.

Ethan is having real trouble making friends and adapting to the new school’s academic standards. Some of this we expected, since Colorado and California have different expectations for third graders and California has some… interesting… teaching methods. More on that later. What we didn’t expect was to have a teacher who flat out told me “I cannot stand it when kids fidget” and all but accused Ethan of lying when he came home upset the second week of school. There was a problem in math class that Ethan didn’t understand. Ethan, who is admittedly over-sensitive to adults’ feelings towards him, was convinced the teacher was mad at him because he didn’t know how to do division. His teacher was more concerned with convincing me that she did not “yell” at him than she was clearing up his confusion about what was expected of him. She first tried to tell me that Ethan misunderstood her and they were discussing “envision math”. But, then, I had Ethan write on the blackboard the problem he couldn’t do and he wrote 4 */* 1 = (You’ll have to translate the */* symbol into the traditional division symbol, my computer won’t let me do that one!) I said “That IS division!”. The teacher responded “Well yes, but it was just an example”.

/facepalm

I had a meeting on Tuesday the 27^th with Ethan’s teacher, the principal, the school psychologist, the speech pathologist and the occupational therapist. We enrolled Ethan in the “friendship club” to help him make new friends and learn social skills. He will get additional reading comprehension and phonetic awareness classes twice a week. I informed the principal and the OT that Ethan HAS to do some type of “fidget behavior” in order to help him process sensory feedback and to improve his focus. We outlined a few steps we can take and I made it clear that the teacher telling him to sit on his hands was NOT acceptable. We’ll see how he does.

I’ve also started a home-school math, grammar and literacy program for both boys, to ensure that they are receiving the kind of instruction they need.