How Quickly Time Goes By

I have not updated this blog in a very long time, but I just read an article on Facebook reminding me of just how quickly times goes by. It's time to say a few words about my beautiful daughters and the summer we are having--the one that will be over way too quickly.
Imma is about to start third grade.  She is a completely different person than she was just a year or two ago. She is doing amazing things. She loves Minecraft and builds structures on there "like a boss" to quote her directly. It is unbelievable to me to see what she can do. She has some amazing friends who do a great job of weeding the autism out from the little girl, and I am always appreciative that we live in such a tight community where parents talk to their kids about including kids that are different and teachers are always right there to accommodate everyone. She had an amazing teacher this year, and a spectacular year--not a single "yellow."

Imma at 8.

Lucy will be starting kindergarten next month--and I can't believe my baby isn't such a baby anymore. She may look more like her daddy, but she is me in almost every way a child can take after her mother.  She is sensitive, overly-dramatic, loud--kind, considered, and loving.  I hope that I am still all of those latter things as well.

Lucy at almost 5.

We have three dogs now with the addition of Kassidy, our Hungarian Pumi. She is my new baby--now that the girls are getting bigger.  And the girls love her as well.

Kassidy. She has eyes, I promise.

I made the tough decision to change school districts this year, which means I won't be going to school with the girls. It's something I'm upset about because I wanted to see them, but at the same time, we all need to be independent people for at least part of our day, and I know they will be in fabulous hands at the school they will be attending.
Right now, I am focusing on spending as much quality time with them for these few fleeting weeks remaining in summer.  They are amazing little girls and I know before long they will be amazing young women. Hopefully, time will slow down just enough for me to be able to hang on to a few of these moments before they slip by.

Parent-Teacher Conferences Still Make Me Nervous!

It's been about a year since the whole ordeal with whether or not Imma was ready for kindergarten began and I still get a little queasy walking into a meeting with her teachers. I know that this is totally different--new school, new district, new philosophy for special education--but I can't help but have momentary flashbacks to the horrendous experience we had last year.
In our new school district there are conferences in the fall and the spring.  We just had Imma's spring conference.  There were no surprises.  Imma is struggling in areas where she has to understand abstract concepts or be able to perform a task based on information she should have attained from listening to a story or specific directions. She is struggling with putting letter sounds together or figuring out unfamiliar words from picture clues.  I'm not surprised at these things.Of course she is having difficulty when it comes to areas where she'd have to be able to process language.
She also has a few areas where her behavior has to be modified.  Again, that's not surprising.  She can be a bit mischievous.  In fact, her behavior at home is probably worse than it is at school.  At least she doesn't try to ride the other children the way she tries to ride the dog.  At this point, she isn't doing anything beyond typical kindergarten "can't keep her hands to herself" and while we are going to continue to work to extinguish this behavior, at least she isn't biting, kicking, punching anyone. No one used the "A" word and no one told me she "couldn't" or "she'll never."
The bottom line is, she's continuing to make progress and her current placement is working. She has an amazing classroom teacher and resource teacher and a phenomenal speech teachers as well.  I've worked with hundreds of teachers in the last 12 years and I can honestly say her kindergarten teacher is one of the very best teachers I've ever had the pleasure of working with. I have been blessed to have the opportunity to work with some amazing kindergarten teachers, having been one myself for several years, and I would put her teacher on the short-list of fabulous teachers. Her resource is a former pre-k teacher so she knows exactly what Imma needs to work on and she does an outstanding job with her as well.  Imma loves both of them very much and she works for them because she has such a good relationship with them.  She also has the benefit of working with speech teachers who are practically miracle-workers.  Imma's speech has come so far this year because of the hard work of these two amazing women, it boggles my mind to think about all of the things Imma says now that she couldn't say a year ago.
Though we still aren't at the kind of conferences I had envisioned for my children--you know, the perfect kind where the teacher just can't stop saying that your child is brilliant and far above grade-level, etc.--we are far from where I think we would have been if we hadn't made the decision to take our Immy and run.  It's hard to believe kindergarten will be over soon but I'm looking forward to next year.  (We have a lot of fabulous first grade teachers, too!)  Before you know it, I'll be at a kindergarten conference for this one:

Is Lu ready for kindergarten?  Is kindergarten ready for Lu??

and that will be a different kind of conference all together! Better get ready, kindergarten, you only have 2 1/2 years to prepare and time's a ticking!

Thank You, Lucy Calkins!

If you're an educator, especially an elementary teacher, you're probably familiar with Lucy Calkins. I've been trained on a lot of writing programs in my career but I've always stuck to Calkin's program because it works.  I wish I had the time and patience to do more with Imma because she responds to it very well.  Tonight for her homework, she was to read her library book and then draw a picture of her favorite part.  We did that but I asked her to write a sentence, too.  The book was about training a dog to do tricks.  She said her favorite part was when they taught the dog to sit. She drew a picture of a little girl teaching the dog to sit.  I asked her what she could write to tell about the picture and she said, "The dog is sitting."  In Calkin's program, you draw a line for each word to help reluctant or new writers understand where one word ends and the next begins, to teach how to sound words out phonetically, and to help them to see how much they have left to write. So, I drew four lines on her paper and said, "Okay, let's write it down."  She had no trouble whatsoever writing, "The dog is," she knows those words.  But I know she has been struggling with phonetically decoding words and spelling them the way she hears them so I wasn't sure what she would do with "sitting."  I said, "What do you hear first?"  She said "S," and wrote that down.  Before I could ask her what she heard next, she said, "it!" and wrote that down. It is super hard for kindergartners to grasp "ing" so I wasn't surprised that she didn't know that part.  She said she heard an "e" and that was fine with me! Phonetically, that's not too far off and it's pretty common for kids to put an "e" for "ing."  This is what she wrote:

This is progress, in my opinion.  I think she could potentially write several sentences if she was motivated to do so.  I know she isn't quite where we would have hoped she would be academically just yet but considering the obstacles she's overcoming, I am very happy with what she is able to do. Who knows, maybe she'll write my next blog post!

Time to Hit the Books!

I've decided to take the bull by the horns, hunker down, bite the bullet, and move full speed ahead!  I'm going to teach Imma to read--if it kills me! And after two days of fairly intense tutoring, uhm, well, I'm not dead but I am a little exhausted.  I think she probably is, too.  But I feel like she should be reading by now.  She's had the same skill level for a while and she has all of the basics she needs to be able to do it.  I just have to find a way to make her understand what she's supposed to do!
So, yesterday I got out a book that was a little bit too hard for her.  There were a lot of words that she already knew and several that she didn't.  Whenever she got to a word that she didn't know, I did the same thing I do with all of my students. I asked her to look at the first letter and get her mouth ready for that sound.  Her response--laugh hysterically in a goofy voice.  Okay--different approach!  What letter is this?  She barks like a dog and snarls out me.  Imma?  Imma!  IMMA! Finally, after about 10 times of asking, "what sound does this letter make?  This one. No this one right here.  Imma?  Imma! You know this letter, you know this letter!" she would finally give me the information I was asking for.  And it isn't because she doesn't know her letters or letter sounds.  I don't know if it is because she just didn't know what I wanted, she was just burned out and being silly, or if she is just a toot, but she should have been able to answer my questions very quickly and she wouldn't. After about twenty minutes, we finally got through the book with no blood and only a few tears.
I asked one of her teachers this morning if she responded to her this way and she said no (thank God!) She said she laughs sometimes but she's never barked at her or done some of the other annoying things she was doing for me.  I don't know if they are asking her to do the same things that I am doing either.  All teachers have their own methods of teaching reading so they may not be teaching her the same way that I am attempting to.  I have had a lot of success with my approach and I'm going to keep trying with her because I'm hopeful that I'll find a way to reach her.  Today went much better but that might be because we worked on it before school when she wasn't as tired instead of after school. I also brought her to my reading table at school so I think she was taking it a little more seriously.
This isn't at all to imply that I don't think her teachers are doing an excellent job or that I feel like they aren't doing everything they can because I know they are.  I just have very high expectations for her and I really hated seeing her name sooooo far down on the list of kindergartners when I rank ordered their test scores. (I did that because it's my job, not because I am obsessed with her test scores, just FYI). So, I've  just decided to move into high gear and use all of the methods I use with all of my non-reading struggling students and see if any of those make her understand what she is supposed to do when she comes to a word that she doesn't know.  Right now, she's just learning words, one at a time, and while that would be fine, it will take a long time.  I'm hoping she'll figure out that, since she knows her letter sounds, she should be able to put those together and start decoding words.  As of right now, she isn't getting that and I'm trying to find a way to explain it to her so she does get it.
With that in mind, we will try again tomorrow!  Wish us luck!

Heartfelt Prayers for Families in Connecticut

I haven't left school yet. I felt like I needed to write this here. I was eating lunch when a colleague came in and asked if I had heard about what happened in Connecticut today. I hadn't but when she explained what had happened, I felt tears in my eyes and my stomach turned over. As a former kindergarten teacher, someone who works with kindergartners everyday, and the mother of a kindergartner, the horrific events that transpired this morning were almost unbearable. I cannot imagine what the families who lost loved ones today must be going through. My sincerest prayers for strength, courage, and healing are sent to them this evening as I hug my kindergartner a little tighter. As educators, we seldom ponder the possibilities of putting ourselves in harms way at work. But it happens much too frequently these days that teachers are called upon to make the ultimate sacrifice for their students. I actually started to type "children" instead of "students" because that's how most of us view them. These are my children, everyday from 7:15-3:45. They are my responsibility. If I was in a similar situation, I would hope that I would have the courage to protect these little people even if it meant sacrificing everything. God bless those teachers who did just that today. If you have children, hold them even more tonight. If you know an educator, send him or her a little message and let them know you appreciate what they do for our children. If you are a teacher yourself, as many of my friends and followers are, I thank you so much for giving of your hearts and souls each day to make our world a better place. We will never be able to understand what happened today but I hope that educators, parents, and law enforcement can work together to prevent it from ever happening again.