Teacher Conference

Tuesday was teacher parent conference night and we had a meeting with Mr. Man and Miss Fabulous' teachers and some of the support staff. The consensus was that Mr. needs some extra help and some accommodations such as typing homework instead of hand writing sentences.  The support staff and teacher were concerned that he had recently ripped out a bunch of his hair and since homework stresses him out they felt it appropriate to make accommodations.  The Hubs and I were on board with that! 

Mr.'s situation is such that even though he does not melt down at school his teacher is very well aware of how stressed he is at times.  He is driven by the need to be done first, if he isn't done first then he feels that his work doesn't count at all, that it isn't valuable.  And it doesn't matter how many times it is explained to him this is the way it is in his mind.

It is reassuring that he seems to be on track for getting needed  help this year at school.

Both of the kids have new speech teachers this year and they both are gung ho.  Miss' speech teacher wants to test test test and I said go for it!  Miss had just taken a reading assessment that day and she scored as a beginning reader in the second grade.  Much lower than she had scored the last time she was tested.  I asked the teacher if she felt that was accurate and she said no and I said me neither.  I said that I would guess that Miss Fab did not feel like taking that test at that time.   Mrs. Teacher said that was correct because she had to keep instructing Miss to get back to work and that this was important and that she needed to do her best. 

A typical thing to direct a student on as a teacher but with Miss probably the most wrong thing to say.  She said that she would retest her as soon as she was allowed to and that we would see how she did then.  I honestly considered recommending that they use candy and let her know the higher the score the more candy she'd get.  She'd ace it but that seems inappropriate.

We looked over some of the work that Miss had recently done and the teacher mentioned that her grades were not as good as they were getting into the real second grade curriculum and we said that was consistent with what we had seen in the past.  She recognized that there were answers that were obviously wrong that she felt Miss probably really did know the answer to.  That was encouraging to feel that the teacher understood that.  It is just Miss way of rebelling against being told to do something that she doesn't want to be doing.  She is not comfortable to tantrum there at school but she will refuse to answer their questions correctly so take that!

The teacher seemed to understand that Miss is not always on the level but that she is a pretty cute kid any how.  Miss seems to be having better peer relationships in school.  The teacher said that she feels Miss has the concepts that are being taught and that she tends to be a ring leader in her small group and that her group tends to do the best in terms of the concepts that they are working on.  I told her that was consistent with what Miss was sharing at home because she had told me that she was "very popular" and that "everyone wants to be in my group and I have to say whoa there slow down a minute people!"  Her teacher said that was accurate.

I hope that this positive trend carries on.  This is the time of year where we tend to see the most stability from Miss.  And I'm thankful for it!

This is Sparks the firefighting dragon.  As room Mom for Mr's class I was assigned to the job of drawing Mr. Sparks.  The kids will be decorating him on Friday.  On Monday I am commissioned to help with Miss' class hero.  These characters are for a contest related to the schools book fair.  Reading counts!

This is just a cute pic that I found when I was uploading Mr. Spark.  Dad took these three kids hiking while Miss went with Mom and Nan shopping.

And that's one to grow on!