Never a dull moment

Last night we caught Isaac reading Go, Dog, Go! out loud, pointing to each word, and reading very fluidly all by himself.  It was one of those rare, serene parental moments when you feel like you've done right by your kid.  When you feel like you've made at least some good decisions.  Enough good decisions that your not yet five year old is reading this well.  All this was after Isaac had hopped in the car after school beaming and saying, "I had a good day!  I get a cookie when we get home!  I didn't cry at rest time... I had zero 'minders (reminders)."  Awesome.  He finally feels better and is getting the hang of school and enjoying it, I thought.  Just in case, I emailed his teacher to see her side of things.  Her only response was to ask if we could come in to talk to the principal at 3:15pm today.  All feelings of good completely vanished.

My first thought was that they wanted to put him in a separate special ed class.  I reasoned this in my head because I had dropped off a big folder of all of Isaac's evaluations, IEPs, report cards, etc. for the special ed service lady yesterday.  I worked myself into a hot mess, went for a run, listened to music, prepared for battle.  I even gathered my troop- which consists of Andrew, to reign me in, and I was glad he came because he remembered something about Isaac that I would have forgotten to mention.  It turns out that his principal wanted to express her concerns over Isaac's readiness for kindergarten.  Fair enough.  He is not even five yet.  But also, to be fair, he's only been in school for a total of 7 days in the first two-three weeks of school.  Five of which he wasn't feeling well.  Andrew remembered that it took Isaac a few weeks to get back in the swing of things at the beginning of his second year of pre-school, too.  We asked what our options were, and she said that while the decision to enroll him is totally up to us, there are other programs like "pre-kindergarten" programs that would be just wonderful.  Oh? We asked, where are these programs? At private schools, she said.  Is there room at these programs?  Tuition?  She wasn't sure about any of these questions.  She did know that a few were affiliated with churches.  Southern churches.  No, thank you.  We chose public education for several reasons.

So we compromised.  We asked that she give him a couple more weeks now that he's feeling better to get the hang of things, and if he hasn't adjusted to their liking we will talk about options then.  Although, she even admitted to me that he is already having a much better week this week.  Andrew and I decided that if at the end of a couple of weeks they are not happy with his progress, or "readiness", or if his teacher seems not willing to work with us, we will just homeschool with something like http://www.time4learning.com/index.htm curriculum and enroll him in community classes for socialization until next year.  Never a dull moment around here.