A Smiley School Meeting

Thursday afternoon I met with Mrs M and the counselor. We'd discussed meeting a few weeks ago in order to determine if we wanted to continue with the 504 plan, and just to see how the kid's adjusting in Mrs M's room. Y'all, seriously, the meeting was great. And very interesting.

So we started off with Mrs M just giving me an overview of how she structures her classroom. It's so much more free-flowing and Montessori-ish. Be still my momma-heart. Then she told me about the movement breaks she has worked into the schedule (for the kids and herself). And that in "centers" there are always choices. Like the kids get to choose what they're going to do from 2-4 different activities (novel concept, eh?).

And then she broke out the sheet. You know, the one that Mrs L used. But, instead of describing everything as an "area of concern", everything was "accomplished", with the exception of 3 areas that all involve him not being able to wait to be called  on to speak out (and - for real - no big shocker there). And these were classified as "progressing plus" because, according to Mrs M, he's shown drastic improvement with this already since he started in her room, without intervention. This was about the point I exhaled in relief the enormous breath I had apparently been holding.

She went on to say lovely things about the kid. "She likes him! She likes him!!!!!!". That's about all I was hearing. So I hope there wasn't anything really important in there. 'Cause if there was I totally missed it.

Overall, it was such a relief to hear all these things. And a confirmation of the decision we (uh, I) made to switch his classroom. I must admit the validation was nice. But, mostly, I'm just happy that my kid is happier and that he's being treated kindly. And that the other major woman in his life also likes him. Shew.

Today's lesson: Save your blog post before you walk away from it . Otherwise your children may decide to pull your laptop off the ottoman, type their own crap on it, delete half your (unsaved) blog post, change completely your Internet settings, and send an email to who the hell knows who on your work email. You know, of the job you just started last week. Such things are apparently possible in less than 3 minutes. Even though it takes your 10x that long to undo all of it. Or you could just put your laptop where they can't access it. In hindsight, this may be the most helpful lesson the day.