School Conferences

Kim and I skipped out of work today to go speak with one of Jack's teachers. Nothing out of the ordinary, just a parent-teacher conference. We weren't able to get to one of the scheduled appointments so Keri was good enough to meet us during her lunch hour. I'm here to tell you these Montessori schools are staffed by good people.

You may remember that he had a hard time adjusting to the new school and often cried when he was dropped-off. Everyone was encouraging at the time, and just as the knew he came around. He's now quite happy at school and is starting to pick up on some of the lessons. He particularly enjoys "cheese cutting" as he calls it. Mostly this involves him eating cheese, he's supposed to cut it but tends to just eat. Lately he's been telling us about painting and mixing colors. Turns out he doesn't do these things for very long because the teachers have to stop him from painting himself and the inside of his mouth.

We had heard from his teacher that Jack doesn't stay on task in the afternoons, and is actually a bit of a distraction. So we feared they were going to encourage us to only bring him in the mornings. That would be great, we think it's a long day for him, but we'd have to come up with other arrangements and a do lot of extra driving. Realistically it would work best to leave him there. That's what they thought, too. They actually had come up with a plan for Jack and other kids in the same boat. They're going to have one of the teachers bring a handful of them up to the office for some quiet time. Napping if they'll do it, or whatever they want, just to be out of the classroom. Should be a win-win.

The elementary teacher was also there, Ellen, so we also talked with her. Lucas brought home a project the other day. He had drawn a picture and written a story about it. "There were four orkas. Wun jupt up." I was amazed by it but also somewhat curious about the poor spelling. Yes I know he's still five, but he is a genius after all so I asked Ellen if reading at his level and still not being much of a speller was normal. She replied that Lucas isn't normal. She doesn't know of any other kids who can read as well as he can.

Most learn to read in a progression - sounding out words, then "discover" and finally "sight reading." Lucas just skipped to the end so he's going to have to work on the sounding out of new words when he wants to spell them. But none of us think this will be a problem. He is a genius after all.