OH, figured I'd add this here - DH & I met with DS's 2 teachers yesterday after school. I _really_ like his math/science teacher. I think he's going to do really well in her class. She's very straight-forward and organized from what I could see. His social-studies/language arts teacher might have a little more trouble. She's younger, and more inexperienced, and I think the kids in her class already sense it (twice now I've heard from DS about the whole class getting in trouble because of them all talking/being loud.) They were both very interested in helping DS do well, and the science/math teacher said she hopes we can work out his behavior issues, because she feels like "there's nothing he can't accomplish" - her words. She's also got lots of great stuff in the room for the kids to do after they've finished their work, or moved ahead - flash cards for the times table, experiments, other books/worksheets, etc. She's totally in favor of differentiation, and assured us she is not a fan of making a kid do worksheets for the same topic over and over if the child has shown they understand it already (a big problem last year!) His ss/lang arts teacher said she brought in more of her higher-level books for DS to be able to read and she's given the kids some fun projects to work on that have really interested DS (she said he wrote a full page the other day on why he should be the class organizer, while everyone else wrote like one or two sentences on why they should get the class job they wanted.)
Overall I am very optimistic about this school year! If things go well I think next year will be really awesome with the introduction of a foreign language class!
