I spend a lot of time at my daughter's school. Actually, Thursdays and Fridays are generally nearly full school days for me.
This post isn't really about that, but that will make sense in a few.
Yesterday, my mom was talking to me about my sister writing a note for my niece to take to school. It seems as though my 4th grade niece has to sit between two boys at lunch (assigned seats) and the boys are being horrible. They dumped chocolate milk on C- on Monday. (Intentionally.) She was doused in water on a different day. On Tuesday, they were saying that they wanted to rap%e her. Yes. You read right. Rap#e. C-, not knowing what that meant, came home and asked my sister.
Understandably, she about flipped.
They discussed the matter. LeAnne has been giving her coping strategies for a couple of months. They got to the point that they knew that it was time for mom to intervene. When I found out that her intervening involved a note, I let my mom go and phoned my sister. She answered. "You can't write a note. You have to go in." "Huh?" "You can't send a note. A note is not okay. You must go in and meet with the principal-- now." She didn't want to be that mom, but I told her that this was a case where she HAD to be that mom. As it turns out, she did go, the principal took the matter very seriously and not only was C- moved, but the boys have been reprimanded in some way.
The time that I log in at school gives me opportunity to see how the school functions. Mr. B- runs that place like a well oiled machine. He doesn't take crap from kids, doesn't take crap from parents, but is a very nice guy. The kids all love him, he knows every single one of them and I told LeAnne that I know how he would handle the situation and I expected that her principal would do the same.
Today, I picked the girls up from school. LeAnne had an appointment and as I was sitting in the car conga line, I noticed a child standing to be picked up. A child that was dressed in pajama pants.
Really?
LeAnne reports that she sees it from the line every day. I told her that for me, it seemed weird to see kids out of uniform.
Have I ever expressed my intense love for school uniforms?
I was going through the PTA mailbox today. We have PTA elections coming up and there were some forms in there for people willing to step up and take board and chair positions. I got a kick out of one, though. One woman marked that she would like to be PTA President. Great. I'm glad that she gave consideration to the handful of open positions we will be having. There's a glitch, though. She is not a member of the PTA and doesn't attend meetings. How could she run a PTA that she has no experience with or involvement in? I appreciate her stepping up, but perhaps she'd want to be a member first and take a lower ranking board position to get her feet wet first. Just sayin'.
We have fundraiser frozen food item pick-up tomorrow. I've already prepared the office ladies to know that I will not be staying late. I will not be bringing people's food home to my house. I will not be having people come to my house to pick things up. If they do not come tomorrow night, they will have to come next week. Let us hope that all will be picked up. At least it is all paid for!
The Garden Fair seeds were distributed today. I had one teacher whine. "Well, I know that ALL the girls are going to want flowers for their mothers for Mother's Day so I guess that I'll take this one packet and distribute those." "I have a pack of seeds for each child in there and one pack for you." "But they are all going to want flowers." "I could give you an extra pack to use for the class, I have peat pots you could have and I could give you soil." "But what are we going to do with them over spring break?" "I don't know, but I can tell you that I have materials." "But why don't we have plants this year? We have just seeds?" "Well, I got $550. in seeds donated, so we'll be going with seeds this year." "Oh."
Sheesh. Give 'em something for free and they still complain.
On the flip side, I had additional packages that I was distributing to staff other than teachers. They were so excited. "I heard about those good seeds you got!" Hooray!
We studied for tests this evening. K- has a math, reading and a spelling test tomorrow. Marathon test study sessions like this are a family event. I spend time to make her a math test. She did poorly the first time she took it, but corrected it well and got an A- on her Mom Practice Test. I told her that I will have her do some more math problems in the morning to warm her brain up. "Petroglyphs" and "telephone" are spelling words this week (along with a long list of difficult words) and bless her heart, I do believe that she will be getting those wrong. We'll give that a bit of a tweak in the AM as well.
2nd grade. Who knew it would be so difficult? I had helped K- on a math paper, completely misunderstood a section and she bombed it. She got a "See Me" on the paper. She fixed it and before she returned it I wrote, "I managed to make it through 7 years of college, yet I can't manage to do 2nd grade math." Mrs. B- laughed at me.
Why do they feel the need to continue giving children stories that are Spanish based? These children are still sharpening their newer reading skills and words like "Guadalupe, charro, Yaqui Indian" and the like are beyond what these kids should have to be tested on. The last Spanish based test they had for reading really threw K- for a loop. Her teacher counts off for any spelling errors, so this test should be a doozy.
Tomorrow will be a long day. I must go meet up with my pillow.
Have a great day!
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