My kids are in public school. It's been a personal choice that, for the most part has worked for us. Except for the year that I pulled Jane and homeschooled her, the kids have been in public school continuously. All five have been in the system since pre-school, most going to school by age three. With the chronic speech and language delays every single one of my children have struggled with, they've all qualified for pre-school extremely young.
Throw in some fabulous teachers at Wilcox, the children's elementary school, that have been stupendous advocates for my children's need, public school has really worked for us.
Now that we're dealing with middle school, we're dealing with policies that make little to no sense. I will admit that for Jane both seventh and eighth grade has gone much better then that year we pulled her out. Still, this year I was surprised to receive a letter that my oldest has five absences in one of her classes. If she gets two more absences, it counts as a truancy.
Now, Jane has missed a few afternoons from being sick but this was a morning class and she's been to school every day.
Turns out, the school has a policy concerning homework. Jane had gotten behind in her math homework and had a miserable month playing catch up. The school pulled her from lunch and required her to attend a class, I don't know what the name is, for homework delinquencies. It runs for the entire lunch period, including part that overlaps students other classes.
So, wait. My child was at school. Every. Day. And she's in trouble for missing homework, so you pull her from class, where she could potentially get further behind and count the missing classes against her??? What kind of asinine policy is THAT??
I told her, she better not miss anymore assignments but I am extremely frustrated there's a policy in place that could potentially throw her further behind and punish her for a situation *vague wave of hands* the school created!
She's caught up now and hopefully has learned to keep up with her responsibilities. She's trying and hopefully she's getting credit for that.
The good. I got a call from Ean's teacher on Wednesday. You know Ean, my wonderful, bright, intelligent spaz that struggles with not bugging the carp out of other people. Well he was bugging a girl trying to work on the computer. Usually Ean gets in trouble and suffers the consequences but this teacher took it upon herself to set a goal with Ean to not bug other people for the next four days. This takes him right to Tuesday, when school is let out for Thanksgiving.
She put a note on Ean's desk to remind him, it says "I will not bother others" with the dates marked, ready to be checked off. After four days he gets to pick something from the reward bucket. She also called and talked with me to make sure what she'd done was alright.
Lets see. She's taken what's normally a negative and put a positive proactive spin on it. She's helped my son set a goal, that's reasonable and within his grasp. She also talked to the class and let them know that Ean is working on not bugging others and encouraged them to help Ean. Which I'm totally fine with because, it's not like they don't know.
Hopefully this works and Ean sees that he can control his actions. I'd love to have something to oooh and aaah over in a few days.
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