Sam's Kindergarten Orientation...

I'm going to start this post with a brief look back on Harry's kindergarten orientation.

Two years ago, I took Harry over to his old school and went into the kindergarten room where I met his two teachers who went over a bit about their classroom. His teachers went over the rules of their room and how they were one person in two. Then I was told to leave Harry head over to the cafeteria. The principal spoke to all of us parents about how our job was basically over and the kids were now theirs to do with what they will. Okay, so she didn't actually use those terms, but that was the gist of the talk. She also talked about how kindergarten is now really academic and the kids would need to do lots of work and listen and sit for a long time.

There was more, but that was the first warning about how kindergarten was going to go.

Contrast that with today. Sam and I walked into the cafeteria where the principal welcomed us and turned the time over to the teachers. There are five total, three morning classes and two afternoon. They briefly talked about how kindergarten would work and we went over to the classes. The only thing that gave me pause was one of the teachers saying, "if the kids are five minutes late, that's five minutes of learning time they miss." My thought was, "oh, no, whatever shall we do." But hey, apparently I'm a total rebel.

We went back to the classroom where his teacher (who is really, really tall) asked the kids to line up and practice walking out to meet the parents picking them up. Sam froze. I led him out with the other kids and left him standing there. He was with the kids, but not really with them. His teacher told the kids they could go find their parents and Sam just stood there. I wanted to see what she would do, how she would handle Sam just freezing.

Sam had brought a book to show the teacher, so I went over and asked Sam to show it to her. He just opened right up! He told her all about the bionicles in the book. Miss B listened and talked to him. It was great. She spend at least 10 minutes just talking with him about Bionicles and this little seal toy he had in his pocket. He was eating up the attention and really liked her. Finally it was time to leave and he kind of froze up again, but he was still doing okay. I was able to tell Miss B that he is really, incredibly shy and there is no magic key for solving it. He just has to make the decision to keep moving. I also totally impressed her by telling her that Sam can read on a third grade level and that he actually read the Bionicle book he brought with him.

When we got back in the car, Sam told me that I was right, she is really nice!