Brandon had his Meet the Teacher night on Thursday. He'll have spelling, reading and ELA in the morning and math and science in the afternoon. That should keep him focused in the afternoon at least. He dreads going back to school. I wish I knew what to do or say that would change that for him. If it's a subject that he likes, like reptiles, space, national monuments and such, then he's fine. He'll complain about the reading, but he'll do it but writing is still a major battle. Every single teacher he's ever had for any subject has told me that as soon as it comes to writing, he just shuts down. He has decided that his career of choice will be an engineer, so that he can design Yu-go-Oh battle theaters. Not sure there'll be much call for that in 10 years, but if it gets him to start thinking about learning in a positive light, I'll encourage it.
Now Jacob, he is more than ready for school. He's been waking up every morning between 12 am and 4 am crying for the bus. And no, he doesn't go back to sleep. Since he started school at age 3, he's never had to go more than 2 weeks without school, so this summer going the entire month of August is killing him. Friday we went up to his "new" school (which is really his old school, the one that lost him); we do this so that he can get an idea of where he'll be and meet the teacher ahead of time. Lo and behold, all the bitching we did last year must have left an impression, because not only had they already transferred his file, but the new teacher had even gone through it. (Last year they didn't have his file until the second day of school, after we complained loudly, since they didn't even know about key incidents in his file, like the previous school losing him twice in one school year. When I called the district, I was told that it wasn't their problem. Yeah, wrong thing to say. Two phone calls later, they had a school board member, a district superintnedant and an area superintendant to deal with.) And the bussing department has already sent his schedule and made their practice run. We are miles ahead of where we were last year! We got to meet his new teacher, and my first impression is very positive. She is more of a "real world" teacher, like Jacob had last year. By this I mean, for learning to sort, the kids sort silverware, or different colored clothing and such. Skills and activities that transfer over to real life, not just moving around squares of colored paper. She was completely non-phased by Jacob being not potty trained, since she used to teach high school and had some students who didn't learn until then (her theory is keep doing what your doing but understand, he'll train when he's ready). Jacob made so much progress last year that I'm hopeful that that progress will continue. When she first came up front, he grabbed her hand and started waving and telling me "bye bye!". No hesitation or anything. He's definitely ready for back to school. Monday is the big day. Hopefully he sleeps the night before.
