Back to School

Let's just go down the line...

Trevor: (4th grade) Quite the adjustment from lower elementary, to upper elementary. Thankfully, still no homework on the weekends...that's required at least. Although, his teacher has already attempted to do so. Nope! Not gonna happen in this household...at least for this year and hopefully next.

Math and the need for high organizational skills seem to be a lot tougher this year already. "Unfair" (naughty word in our home!) kickball teams seem to be most of Trevor's complaints. I'll take it. ;-) The highlight over the last 2.5 weeks of school has been the celebration of Trevor's birthday on a school day. This is the first! Trevor was THRILLED to have his brothers and I bring cold treats for all to share and a ride home in the family car vs. the daily school bus routine. Another highlight I nearly forgot to write, is that Trevor will be in the school orchestra and has been approved to play the trumpet! Lord help us all... :-)

Trevor is still adjusting to all the changes and it'll be a process.

Jackson: (2nd grade) LOVES, LOVES, LOVES his new school! It's amazing how many families we know there at Valley Pres. School (VPS) and yet we had no idea so many of them attended that school. We've seen families we know back from our Awana days, our own church (!), baseball and MET2 (musical the boys were in last year). Jackson sits near the front of the class and has 2 teachers majority of the week. He really enjoys all his own personal school supplies vs. the generic (but nice!) supplies he received in public school.

That leads me to my next thought. Public school vs. Private school; DANG! MAJOR DIFFERENCES! Quality of teachers so far seems comparable. However, the VPS teachers seem to have more patience and don't seem burned out or exhausted. I know it's only been a couple of days back in school but still, this is already a huge noticeable difference for us. The office staff is calm and seem to have a very good handle on all incoming and outgoing systems, families, info, etc. This is also a major difference for us. The Principal isn't running around looking like she's ready to pull her hair out...another major difference. Another difference worth mentioning is the quality of the school work. Pages aren't coming home looking like they've been photo copied about 1,000 times, it's all very related to character building and seems like work with a purpose (of course major subjects are all like that at any school, but the "fluff" assignments seem all very purposeful, not work to kill time)

Jackson is really enjoying this change, the change that he was so against for a while. He's now adjusting to the uniform policy (solid collar shirt w/ twill pants/shorts).

Nathan: (1st grade) The little man of so little words when discussing his feelings about change or something new. Wait, I think that's most men! ;-)

Nathan LOVES his very own pencil box that is the home of his very own instant hand sanitizer where he can remain as clean and germ free that he'd like (within reason, I've already had to have a discussion with his teacher about this...big brothers were present and they were classic peanut galleries about this topic as well)! Nathan loves that everything is personalized for him and his classmates; i.e. his very own coat/backpack hook with his name, desk with his name, labeled school supplies, his name on all school books, sticker chart with his name and the list could go on...

Nathan LOVES having Jackson at school with him because A.) he loves his brothers B.) this means he doesn't have to make any friends...something else I've already discussed with the teacher.

A BIG change for Nathan (and myself) is no IEP this year for Nathan. He still has one through LAUSD, but since we've switched to Private school it doesn't transfer without a legal fight and a whole lot of money for that fight. Since Nathan has done so well in school and in his previous areas of need, LAUSD and I had agreed on pulling many of his services for the 2012-2013 school year anyhow. Leaving primarily speech therapy as Nathan's main area of need. Nathan hasn't had speech therapy since the beginning of June and I've seen a little set back, but Nathan has been so happy to not have all these appointments and the hard work that goes into these therapies. So, assuming nothing major will change, we're taking this school year off from special ed services and see how Nathan does completely unassisted.

VPS also has a music program (for an additional fee of course) and Nathan couldn't be happier about the possibilities of playing the violin! So I guess our neighbors and ourselves will be hearing a whole lot of trumpet, violin and piano (Trevor and Jackson) practicing around our home. YIKES!



*Let me explain the yellow tape around the playground. It's a brand new playground that was put in over the summer. The kids couldn't play on it until the school went over the rules (which they did shortly after the 1st day of school started).