More About School: On Choice, Diversity, and Trouble

A post in three parts: I. Choice, II. Parents and Diversity; III: School Trouble

I. A few thoughts about my choice and feelings about it:

Yvette asked in her comment: "I'd be interested to hear more about it and how you feel over time about your decision of that school over your other options."

Well, first of all let me say that I felt the requisite guilt-tinged relief of not having to deal with my child for a 7 hour stretch (I guess most moms who kept their children at home with them until finally sending them off to kindergarten, or even those who are sending them to pre-school feel this way -- tell me about your experience if you can). Let me tell you, having only Linton with me on the day before we vacated the house and "D-day" brought me unimaginable relief -- hence the guilt. Kelvin is just very dependent on me, he doesn't like to play on his own, only certain games that he creates with his brother, but those last half an hour at most. Linton, on the other hand, can entertain himself and be out of my way the whole time -- he's a very easy little boy in that respect (he certainly does have his own flaws, but that's another matter).

As for my decision, after I saw the school, it was the easiest decision EVER! This choice is a compromise between home or cyber-schooling -- which I would never be able to accomplish since I just cannot structure the day and our lives and organize myself to do it, I just can't -- and a big public school. Having grown up in another country I feel extremely uncomfortable sending him into the great unknown (to me) that is public school in this country. I know that the system is excellent, but it does have its flaws. Whatever flaws it may have are not the problem for me, though, it's the fact that school here is a big "unknown" to me is absolutely scary, particularly as it concerns sending my son there. So I guess it's another one of those things related my life as an expatriate. And then there's my own background and "baggage" to deal with.

In Brazil I went to private schools all my life (most middle class people do so there), not only that, but they were part of a religiously affiliated school system (website in Portuguese here) that is very well regarded all over the country (there are 380 of these schools in Brazil-- most K-8, but many with high schools as well). These schools are very good academically and this week they were actually featured in an article of the Brazilian national news magazine Veja (I'd compare it to Time magazine here in the U.S.) which said very positive things about the school system (70% of the students in these schools are not affiliated with the church, just so you know, although I was). Obviously, private schooling is not the norm in this country, like it is in Brazil, so the same church's schools here are generally not very good or are struggling. Having gone to large schools after 5th grade I tend to be skeptical about tiny little schools. My experience: I only went to three schools all my life -- well, until college :) -- for 1st grade I went to a K-4 church school, but my class had over 20 students. Then from 2nd-4th grade my classes were multi level (two grades at a time) because it was an elementary school at a boarding academy which had many students from 5th grade on, but not in K-4; in 7th grade we moved to São Paulo and I started going to this HUGE (over 900 students) K-8 elementary school which was excellent academically, and I finished high school there (the high school was huge too, with well over 1,000 students, I think) -- oh, and I loved their "prep school looking" uniform -- plaid blue/red/white skirt and white polo shirt (that changed later as the whole school system adopted the same light blue uniform country wide, but I used the "old" uniform until I graduated since I had "inherited" enough outfits from my cousin).

Anyway, the "larger" (two grades per class, except for K) K-8 church school that I could have sent my son to is North of Philadelphia, very far from where we are, but I knew there was a tiny two classroom school just 5 minutes from our new home. I was skeptical about it, but when we visited it I just loved it and I knew Kelvin would enjoy it, particularly because he needs a bit of individual attention because he's still not completely fluent in English. Apart from the individual attention, the school will be able to tailor the curriculum to his abilities. Since he's well ahead in Kindergarten content -- he knows all his letters and can basically count to 100 -- the teacher said that he'll probably be working on 1st grade content by Spring. Last Tuesday we had a pool party with the whole school (more about it in the next paragraph) and I learned that another student skipped a grade (2nd) from last year to this since he wasn't being challenged enough and I was happy to know it, especially after reading Time magazine's cover article from two weeks ago about how the system has failed its brightest kids (not that my son or any of his peers are actually bright) and which says at some point that grade skipping alone might help some of these students.

Anyway, the choice was easy after I realized that the school was a good fit for my son and that I was extremely comfortable with its size and with the academic aspect too.

II. Parents and Diversity
For a tiny, 11-12 students (12 counting the pre-school boy) school, this one has pretty good ethnic diversity -- although the gender division isn't good since there are only 3 girls, none in Kelvin's class. There are five Hispanic children, (two in my son's class), three Asian Americans (two of them "hapa" ), three white (including Kelvin), and one African American.

On Tuesday we had a pool party at one of the students' house even with all the rain that we had that day -- good thing they had a hot tub attached to the pool, so the little kids stayed in there (the water wasn't very hot), and I did too :) and I got to meet four of the parents (most of them, in fact). I really liked interacting with them as well as the teachers and another woman who showed up (she homeschools her children and teaches violin to some of the kids there). Most children in the school are bilingual (including those two homeschooled ones that I met), or have a parent who speaks another language and is trying to teach it to them a bit, isn't this AWESOME? So our family definitely does fit right in with the other families. I'm looking forward to other field trips and extra curricular activities that we may have.

III. Trouble
(I have to leave the hotel room in half an hour so I won't be able to write this well)
OK, can you believe that in his only 4th day in school Kelvin's teacher already had something to talk to me about? That was Wednesday and she explained to me that he just wouldn't finish his worksheets -- would start them, stick them under his desk and not do the work. OK, we can understand that he's not getting enough sleep with the move, etc, but then... yesterday, he did get into real trouble. First, he wouldn't work and would purposely let his crayons slide into the floor and loudly announce to his classmates that "my crayon fell on the floor" (and they would laugh), so he had to work during recess. Then, he almost poked his crayon on a classmate and when the teacher reprimanded him, he acted a bit defiant (just like him :( ) so the older kids' teacher (who's older and extremely experienced) talked very sternly, but lovingly with him about respecting the teachers and other kids, she had him on time-out in her class after she had him on her lap for a while and talking to him. His teacher reported that he was "a changed man" after that.

Yeah... do you see why I was relieved to send him off to school? But now I kind of passed the problem on to someone else. Hopefully together we'll be able to get him to behave better. We have been struggling with his defiant attitude as well as with the way he constantly provokes his brother, for a long time now, and I guess that after only 5 days he was finally comfortable enough to show his "true self" in school. Last night he brought home a pile of "homework" so he could catch up with all the missed work in school and he did it willingly in the new kitchen table. Today he has music class (an excellent music teacher volunteers every two weeks in the school, isn't that awesome?) and I think he's going to have a good day. Let's see what happens in the months to come. Some of the work he's doing right now is way too easy for him, so I guess the teacher will have to start giving him more challenging things soon. I'll keep you posted.