I pulled Van out of his Kindergarten class two weeks ago. I had been observing his class for a month and noticing that there wasn't much teaching going on. I felt that his teacher was trying to do the least amount of work possible and still be there to get her pay check and benefits. She handed out repeated worksheets so she wouldn't have to explain much, they watched videos, listened to c.d.s... really not much teaching going on. They didn't have a very good routine on anything they were doing. They hadn't even started site words or writing phonetically yet. I could just see this was not going to help Van be prepared next year at all. It's a bummer that it was so late in the year before I got in there and observed what was going on.
Van started this last week at his new school. I was a little nervous on how he would do because it's all day K and they also have homework. He was only going 2 hours and 45 mins. before and no homework most days. I was also worried to pull him away from his friends and classmates. He had made some good friends in his previous class, but Van is outgoing and friendly so it didn't worry me too much. Plus when I would ask Van how he would feel if he went to a different school, with a new teacher and new friends, he really didn't care he would say, okay. Since I wasn't feeling good about leaving him at his current school and Van wasn't against me taking him out of his class, I decided to go with it. I was just hoping and praying I was making a good decision.
Well, I met with his teacher on Friday to see how things were going and I was so happy to see that she was actually teaching him! She did say he gets tired around 2:00 which is normal for the kids to get used to all day K. Then she showed me his writing page; she had read the kids a story about a girl who lived in a family and it told how weird the girls family was, but she loved them anyway. After the story she asked the kids to write something that they think is weird about their family. This is what Van wrote, (M d T P) she asked him what he wrote and he said, (My dog eats poop). She said, that is weird. Now how many words did you write and they counted out the words, 4. Then she wrote down 4 _____ and asked him if he hears any other sounds in each of the words. Then he wrote,
Mi dog ets poop. Then she asked if there was anything else he wanted to write and he added,
that weird. She said he found those last two words in the classroom, but smart enough to know where they were. She said it only took 2 mins. to work with him and he wrote a sentence.
I am so happy with the decision I made to pull him out of his previous school and move him to a teacher that is truly motivated to TEACH! I know he only has 3 months left of school, but I can see already that it is going to make a big difference.
