School is Cool?

It has been almost a month since we decided to put M and S in public school. Shortly after they started their classes, I started mine: I am on campus five days a week this semester and I have field work to do. I knew it was going to be a difficult schedule and an uncomfortable transition, but assumed we just needed some time to adjust. Now, I'm not sure.

Laundry isn't getting done or folded. The playroom is rarely getting cleaned. Every time papa mentions some as yet unscheduled activity, I want to shoot it down because I immediately assume anything new is going to be the thing that makes my google calendar explode. On top of that stress, I'm having very mixed feelings about this public school business.

M is in first grade. She's doing fine. She's a little behind with her reading, but we knew that. I think sending her to school has renewed her motivation to pick up sight words and work through short books. Something about having her teacher backing us up, and sending home packets of stuff to work on has made her more serious. She's got someone new to impress, I guess.

Her teacher, a young man so tall and muscular that he would be intimidating if he weren't so darn friendly, is optimistic. He also uses a program called "class dojo" to keep in contact with parents, which I really appreciate. I have had to use the app to ask him for advice on getting the dry erase markers out of her clothes, and he is able to inform me if she is having a moody day.

S, on the other hand, is in fourth grade. She is struggling with more than just the academic part of public school. Her teacher says she's struggling with math and handwriting. The handwriting doesn't surprise me, but she's doing the math homework just fine, with almost no help... and choking on the quizzes in class. She made friends, but her friends are the target of playground bullying. She shares her classroom table with two boys who argue with each other constantly and have no interest in her, and a girl who doesn't speak much English. She doesn't want to go. She mopes every weekday morning, and her teacher describes her (on the phone with me) as "sad".

I have talked to S's teacher only once. I have never seen her. I knew about the playground bullying several days before I was able to tell her teacher... who apparently didn't know. I could have guessed that S was sad in class, but I didn't know until the end of last week, when she finally called.

S says she feels like her teacher cares about her. So, now that she knows about the playground situation, and I know about the all-day sadness, it's time to see if things improve. The teacher wants to try moving S to a different table and says the school takes bullying "very seriously". But I'm skeptical about bullying policies. I'm not sure that any amount of "seriously" is going to fix the problem. Still, we intend to give this a few more weeks to work itself out before we deploy the parachute... and we're not quite sure what that is going to be just yet.