UGH

9 hours of homework yesteday! Enough said........

The retreat

So just over a week ago, my son returned from his 4 day ropes course/community building trip with his classmates. I am so pleased to say that everything seems to have gone well. I did not hear otherwise from his teachers. He seemed to have a really good time. It appears he came home with all his belongings. He didn't starve to death. All in all, I'd wrap that up as pretty successful. Yeah!!

After the trip he has had his first week of "getting to it" school. Homework and expectations have set it. Guess I should have expected a hiccup or two and we had one. An email from his teacher and a "no homework" slip. Seems he spent two nights not doing his lit assignments! Boy did that not make me happy..... So we spent many hours one night trying to catch up. Unfortunately I learned during that time that he also had not read in his novel what he was supposed to have read. He was supposed to get through page 100 by the end of that night and I discovered he was only on page 13!! I had known he was to be reading and had told him the previous two nights how far he was to have gone based on the assignment calendar. The first night he should have read the first 3 chapters. He said to me, "I thought you said the first 3 PAGES?" Please! Are you kidding me?! He knew better. The night we caught up I had to read to him just to move the story along and we still only got to page 50, so he still has lots of reading to do!

Right now are current struggle is him giving us the "I'm not the same as everyone else and you should just accept it" argument. This is not going over well with us. He is trying to use it as an excuse to justify being lazy and unaccountable. Pretty much driving me nuts.

But all in all, so far so good on the Montessori school front. PEACE.

Sorry for the delay

Hello world - Sorry for not posting for so long. We were hard pressed to get through the summer so spending time on the computer wasn't much of an option!

School has started! Yippee!!!!

My son started 7th grade at his new Montessori almost 2 weeks ago now. So far so good. He comes home tomorrow from their first away trip; a 4 day community building/ropes trip. I'm really excited to hear how it went. No phone calls means nothing bad enough happened to get sent home so that's good!

I heard no bad news from the first week of school before the trip. I really like his teachers. I think the thing I sense the most from him is that he feels "normal". He isn't surrounded by only kids he knows are "different". And that is why he feels normal. But I also think it helps him act normal. He has more to lose now. The people watching him have standards and expectations that are more important to him I think. He just knows he doesn't want to look like a dork. I can just tell.

I'm not really sorry that he spent the last 3 years in a self contained class, but at the same time, I wonder. I wonder how things would be different if we had just switched schools sooner. Maybe he would have grown more socially. But what point is there in wondering now? None I guess.

I suppose I only offer my wonder for those that are earlier in the process than we are and have their own decisions to make. Never, take the consideration of a special ed placement lightly. If you think there might be another option worth considering, explore further.

My daughter by the way is loving 4th grade at her school. I look forward to having them at different schools this year so they can be more separate. They need it!