No School

There were not enough busses or bus drivers this morning, so school was canceled???? Dear Joseph stood at the end of the sidewalk for 10 minutes waiting for his bus. I finally looked in the neighbor's driveway--her van was still there. She is a teacher in the district, and usually leaves about five minutes before Joseph bus comes. So, I checked the news. No school. Maybe it was cold and the busses wouldn't start? I'm glad this didn't happen last week when I had a looming deadline.

I baked cookies for tomorrow's book club. And I spent at least an hour crafting an email to both of Alex's teachers, his tutor, and the reading specialist at his school. It was probably just a page or two, but I thought about every word. We were all to have had a meeting this morning. No school may work to my advantage, because I took a lot of time to think about everything I wanted to say to the teachers, and in person I'd have been distracted, we would have only had 20 minutes or so, and with such a big group, I'd have forgotten something I wanted to say. I hope they take the time to read and think about what I've said. I just want them to work hard to teach Alex. Sometimes I think the school has given up on him. Sometimes I think they are clueless. I tried to tell them in my email that I need feedback from them about behavior so I can properly reward him at home, and so I can tell the Dr. if his meds are working. I still think they are so focused on test results they can't see the child. I explained that while some of his work looks the same--for example he is to write sentences with his spelling words each week--it takes him a fraction of the time. In Sept. he could write one or two sentences at a time, and it could take 20 or 30 minutes. Now he can write 10 sentences in less than 20 minutes. But the work the teacher sees is the same. Same sloppy handwriting, same sentence structures over and over. (He likes to start each sentence with either the spelling word or "I." That seems like a reasonable way for him to start to learn to write to me...and it can't be that unusual for a second grader... Acutually, I find his sentences interesting. It helps me see into his brain a bit.)

Alex has figured out that he might not get to go to bookclub, and has actually been on good behavior for me...trying to earn enough stickers!

So maybe in my next post I can complain about Joseph for a change. Or maybe, you all will be thrilled to read how great my kids are! They really are... really...