Middle School Moment

Middle school.  First day of sixth grade, but first you need some background.

AT attended a private preschool and kindergarten.  It was a magical place and was just around the corner from our house.  We often walked to or from school.  The children had to go outside every day for at least a little while to play no matter what the weather. We were encouraged to send them in old clothes so they could get dirty.  Children were allow to climb high in trees, as long as they could get themselves down.  The kindergarten teacher told me she was relieved when the big kindergarteners were leaving at the end of their school year because they almost reached her fear limit.  There were bicycles to ride, zip lines and rope swings to use.  The kids rode on a trailer in parades.   They had hay rides in our neighborhood.  They ran from the mythical "killer beaver" that lived in our creek.  If the city schools were out for snow, the school was open for sledding on the property.  On a snow day, I asked the teacher if she worried about the blades on sleds hurting someone, and she replied, "Oh, they have on thick clothes."  We loved this school.

Then first grade.  It was also within walking distance from our house.  It was a small public elementary school, with a great reputation, with only two classrooms per grade.  I was working where I work now - at a rural school 17 miles from our house.  I could have chosen for AT to attend school with me or stay in town.  Our town has good schools and I was determined that she would stay in town.  I wanted to have every chance to meet as many parents as possible so I would be ready for high school.

So I started AT in school in town with great hopes.  It was first grade.  She did not learn to read in kindergarten, but she had some good skills.  She could not have had more exposure to books.  At home, we usually read books twice a day.  She loved being read to.  She could rhyme words at age 3.  She knew her letters and sounds.  She was ready to go. 

But we hit the perfect storm.  Her first teacher quit after one month of school.  Her second teacher was an entry-year teacher.  The class was heavily weighted with special needs students.  If you have read my blog very many times, you know that I am a strong proponent of inclusion with special needs students, but this class was too heavily weighted with special needs students, behavior problems, and gifted readers.  My child was in the middle of the class and getting no attention at all.  I wanted to be relaxed about her learning to read.  She would do it on her own time.  But I was increasingly concerned at the school year progressed.  When I talked to the teacher, she did not seem to be concerned or have any suggestions.  How could my child, immersed  in reading as she had been, not be progressing more?  Should I be freaking out or relaxed?   Was she not learning to read because of poor instruction or because she had a true learning disability?  It was surely not because of lack of exposure at home.  By the end of the year, I wasn't the only one stressed.  AT was having physical symptoms, health problems, often crying when I dropped her off at school.  Something was stressing her and something had to change.

So, after fretting for months, I took her out of school and put her in my school for the last month of school.  By that point, I did not care what she learned.  I just wanted her to enjoy school.  Within two days, her new teacher sent home words that she needed to learn to read.  I realized I was just given the first piece of prescriptive information to work on at home.  This had not happened in her old classroom, in spite of my expressing my concern several times to the teacher.

On to second grade...at my school.  She was still behind in reading.  Her second grade teacher that year told me that, if she had not been my child (meaning she thought we would work at home), that she would have recommended that AT return to first grade.  And within 9 weeks, she was reading on the second grade level.  You decide:  maturation, or poor instruction.  We'll never know.

AT continued at my school until she completed elementary school.  The reading problem never appeared again.  I'm so glad we had those years together, all those rides together back and forth to school.  Inside the school,  AT's and my relationship was somewhat formal.  In general, she can be a very independent being.   If I passed her in line, we would smile and wave, but just as I wave at any other student.  However, there were a few moments when  "mean" girls were overwhelming and she ran to me after school and climbed up in my lap for comfort.  My heart hurt at the time, but now, I'm filled with thankfulness that I had those precious moments. 

The plan had always been for AT to return to the town school system for middle school.  My rationale was that, in high school, the larger school would provide more variety for AT's creative intelligence, her strength.   AT was very happy at my school and had many friends, so the summer after fifth grade, she was very frustrated with me.  Well, not frustrated.  Mad.  All summer, when people congratulated her on moving to middle school, she let her feelings be known.  "My mom is making me change schools.". I stayed firm.  She changed.

Now...back to middle school.  First day of school.  This was emotionally our Kindergarten year, at least in my mind.  Her true Kindergarten year and first grade were long past.  She had been with me at school for the past five years.  Now I was sending her off with strangers.  She was growing up too fast.  She was still frustrated with me for making her change schools.  We wandered around outside the school, looking for the sixth grade gathering area, then looking for the line for her homeroom teacher.  She said, "Don't leave me!"  I assured her I wouldn't until we found the right line.   Ahh, there it was.  I heard a teacher announce her teacher's name.  She was in the right line and I was about to cry.  I quickly told her.   "I'll be here to pick you up after school.  Love you." and turned away.  I did not turn back to look since I did not want her to see me cry.  I was about 50 feet away and I felt a hand on my arm.  I turned.  It was her, coming for one last "Love you."  She said, "Love you.  Are you crying?"  "Love you and no."  We both turned away and went on with our day.

You Cannot Dial-A-Child

 One thing I’ve learned, in watching AT grow up, is that you cannot Dial-A-Child.  This was brought to the forefront this week when we went to a museum.   When I was a child, we always hit the museums, given the opportunity, and my dad liked taking the role of a teacher, saying, “What do you think that is?”  Often, I knew the information and I also knew that he was pleased when I had the answer.  He probably doesn’t even realize it to this day how much I saw him as a teacher when I was a child.  Now as an adult, I enjoy the role of being a teacher and I give him credit for my being a teacher now.

So, with my own child, I harbored fantasies that I would be teaching facts, that she would be a voracious reader (as am I), that we would share information, that we would share books to read.   When she was little, I promise I read to her constantly.  I imagined that when she was a preteen, I would read wonderful young adult books and pass them on to her.  We would go to the museum and she would be amazed and interested in the information I found.  I, in turn, would be amazed at her prior knowledge. 

Ha!  I repeat….Ha!

That’s not the child of my household, and, at the museum this week, I had a twinge.  Where was this mini-me that I had dreamt of?   Why was she dancing and prancing, instead of looking at the excellent exhibits?  Instead, I have a child who is intense, imaginative, and determined to manage her own ship. She loves her family and friends intensely.   She wants to read for information, not pleasure.  She wants to write her own books, not read the books of others.  She wants to draw, to create.  I’ve learned her creative soul does not want the 5 steps to a project, starting at step one (which is the way my mind works).  Her creative soul wants to create and ask for help only when there is a problem.  She may check in with me for the first time at step four.  Her conversations are peppered with “What would you do if….?” and I’m not even going to fill in that blank because her questions are so far out there and crazy and funny.   When she was younger, her imagination would get her in trouble, because she would ask herself “what-if” questions until she stirred herself up into a frenzy of worry.  We would even say, “No more ‘what-if’ questions.”  She’s matured out of that, thank goodness.

She is socially adept, not shy, like I was as a preteen and teen.  She didn’t want to be out of school this summer because of all the new friends she made at her new school last year. I watched her as a three-year-old, initiate conversation with the leader of the band. As an 11-year-old, she appropriately inserted herself into the conversation with the dad of a child star, so well so that the dad later came to retrieve her to meet the star.   

She is determined to be the master of her own ship.  She knows what she wants, what she approves of, and where she wants to go.  She has firm boundaries around her.  And, in the end, she will be the master of her own ship, as all our children are, and I’ll be left on the shore, holding my breath, whispering “Diligence, diligence!” and waving goodbye.  I did not have the opportunity to Dial-A-Child, but I think God knew what he was doing.