First Report Card!!!

We had Jake’s first SEP conference on Tuesday night, which meant the first report card of his life. It’s kind of a weird milestone for a kid, but I do actually really like the way they do report cards, at least for the younger kids now, showing work, progress and mastery of materials, instead of letter grades, this seems like a much more useful way to gauge learning (which is really what education is about), and progress. I admit that I’m still a little old school though, and had a hard time not thinking “so is a 4 like an A?”

There is also something a bit disconcerting as a parent the first time you go to a conference with your child’s teacher, I’m not sure if it’s something you get used to, or if you just repeat the process over and over with each kid (which in my case isn’t an issue), each grade, each conference. I was actually a bit nervous, mostly I admit I was nervous that I was going to hear something at Jake’s meeting that came as a complete shock to me, you think you know your kid pretty well, but there are always these little ? in your mind, and you really don’t want to be sitting there going “he does WHAT?” (well I guess it wouldn’t be so bad if WHAT was really good, but how often does that happen? I already think Jake is the greatest thing since sliced bread.). There is also that part of you that can’t help think that what your child does in is a reflection on you, and your ability to be a good parent. Which is really not true, I’m sure there are some things that really reflect on the parents (there are kids that are growing up in some really horrible home environments, that I’m sure is reflected in school, I just don’t personally know any of those kids), but for the most part, kids learning curves are there own, we can help them where they struggle, but they still have their own little ways of absorbing the world, that are different than our own (or sometimes a little TOO much like our own, which can be equally frustrating, esp. when we know those things have caused us challenges).

We also know as adults that our kids are going to struggle with things in life, sometimes really hard things, and we like to think that we are somehow going to be able to control, and/or choose which things our kids struggle with, and which they don’t. We know some kinds of struggles are harder than others, or we look at people and assume there are some kinds of struggles we just could never endure. Suddenly our kids are starting down that path where their choices have real life, and often long term consequences, and holy cow that is scary, esp. because you know some of the really um, shall we say messed up choices we made.

The opposite of struggle is also true, for some kids some things just come easily, and often maybe too easily, and we worry that our kids will take that for granted, that they will not understand how truly blessed they are, and that having things come easily will prevent them from developing the compassion and empathy that is sometimes easier to come by, when there are struggles in our lives. I don’t want Jake to think that because many things come easily for him, that is the case for everyone. I don’t want him rolling his eyes when sometimes in life you have to slow down to allow others to catch up. I don’t want him thinking that because he can, that everyone can, because that isn’t how life works either. Education is so much more complicated than getting your ABC’s, and it’s just nerve wracking to first time you have to go in and hear how your little one is getting along in the “real world”.

I’m not 100% sure how Jake is going to like me blogging about his grades, but I’m going to do it anyway, at least to record his process (I think it would be really cool to look back and read about my parent/teacher conferences), until he can read the blog, and tell me to stop. He did really, really well, a whole lot of 4’s (the vast majority 4’s, just a handful of 3’s, and a couple 2’s), which is really awesome for the first couple months of school. Jake was one of only 3 kids in his class to get a perfect score on his home reading (not the 20 minutes, but the books the kindergarteners bring home to read every night), he’s doing really well picking up on reading, he’s doing awesome in PE (that’s a relief to mom, not my strong suit), music (he’s really good at music), computers (his favorite subject, which was I guess the most surprising thing, I thought it would be music), social studies, and parts of math (his teacher said he gets patterns sometimes, esp. color patterns, but has a harder time seeing them if they are shape patterns, so yellow, green, yellow, green he gets but if not colored, circle, square, circle, square, is harder for him to see). His teacher said, he gets along really well with other kids, is very social, is kind and considerate to his classmates, and looks out for others.

His “improvement” areas were:

1- He’s a wiggler, and isn’t so good at sitting still (yeah, I think I knew that one, anyone ever see Jake sit still?). Which is less than shocking considering the genes he has, anyone ever pay attention to the entire Dopp family when trying to sit still? I’ve seriously been concerned we’re going to activate the Wasatch fault with all the leg shaking at some family occasions. Heck, I’m not currently “sitting still” as I write this (my left leg is going 100 miles an hour). Hopefully the wiggles don’t become distracting, but right now, pretty normal for a 5 year old boy, and probably something he will have to figure out how to channel, but the nervous energy thing may be with him his entire life..

2- He doesn’t like to participate in class, at least voluntarily. If you call on him he generally knows the answer, but he doesn’t raise his hand, and is often caught daydreaming (or in Jakeyville as mommy calls it) when the rest of class is doing something, unless it’s something he’s really into (like making a monster book). This one is a hard one, I did a lot of daydreaming in school, and I never volunteered information because I was shy (painfully shy in my case), I’m not sure if there was anything my teachers or parents could have done to change that. Jake doesn’t seem to be shy with his peers, but he’s very shy around adults, esp. adults in authority (after months of going to their house everyday, he will still tell me things at night he wants me to tell Circe, though I’ve told him he needs to tell Circe himself), and the daydreaming I think is boredom. It was for me, but we will watch it, and make sure it’s not an attention/focus issue (something his dad struggles with). Since he can REALLY pay attention, like down to the finest minute detail, when he’s interested, (like um knowing exactly what color costumes, all the CATS wear in the musical and then comparing the differences to other cats he see everyday), I’m leaning towards boredom. So far I know they have covered a lot of stuff he already knows, and as he’s not disrupting anyone else, we’ll just watch it,

3- Doesn’t always complete all his assignments, again the day dreaming, although again I think it’s boredom, because if it catches his imagination he has NO problem with this, in fact there are some things his teacher has said he wants to do every single day. That idea that you sometimes have to do stuff that is boring and that you already understand “just because” is a hard one. Heck I still have a hard time with that, I do it, but it doesn’t mean I like it, well actually in thinking about it will admit sometimes if the consequence isn’t too bad, I don’t do it.

4- He’s struggling with writing, in pre-school he wrote his name with a combination of capital letters and lower case, in fact all their writing was a combination, and he still does that, mostly because he can’t quite understand what is so different between an “A” and an “a”, or an “S” and an “s”. “Still says the same thing doesn’t it” is what he always says, so again just learning that some things just “are”, like names starting with a capital letter, but none of the rest of the name is capitalized (I actually used the “if you write in all big letters people think you are yelling at them” thing, but I’m not so sure that was the greatest idea, he thought that was kind of funny).

5- Um he can’t draw, he got a 2 in “2-D drawing representation of shapes and figures”, I don’t think I got a grade in drawing, but if I had it would have been BAD. I still can’t draw, if you ask me to draw a person to this day it look like more like the Pillsbury dough boy, or well a cross between that and Frankenstein. While something I hope he can improve, I think one can have a pretty successful life is you aren’t really good at 2-D drawing representation of shapes and figures, so hopefully he will be able to compensate from the pathetic, and probably genetic lack of drawing skills.

All and all an awesome beginning to his formal education journey, we put down working on his writing, and completing all assignments as his goals for this term. We are starting a sticker system so I can check his papers when he gets home (I have no idea what the reward will be) and yesterday his name was all lower case on his papers already, so just have to convince him that an “a” is just as cool as an “A” (for some reason he’s REALLY attached to that “A”).

I’m a beaming mommy though, I will definitely take the kind, considerate kid, that looks out for others, who just happens to have the wiggles, and likes to daydream any day of the week.

Way to go buddy! I know you are working really hard, and that you take school very seriously, you are doing awesome!