Yesterday I thought it was all good. He came home with a singing about (the language arts teachers name) and singing "let's get started, we have a lot to do". We make up cheesy songs instead of humming when we're cheerful. The language arts teacher sent home a note that he did his work, with a smiley face and a Yay ! With an exclamation mark.
When I picked him up today his pre-k teacher said, "he's breaking my heart every day when I send him to that other class because he says he doesn't want to go". I asked her. She said he's not crying, he's just saying he doesn't like the other class.
It seems to me like the pre-k teacher had a change of heart about sending him to the pull-out- rightly so, given that he tells her he doesn't like it. I think she wants to quit sending him. Personally I think that's fine. She's obviously willing to differentiate since she's the one who recommended the pull out. She obviously cares a lot about him since he's breaking her heart. I don't want to dig my heels in over the change of heart and then they might not want to risk further differentiation. I want to tell her I trust her to make the school decisions. She has 20 years experience. Her caring kindness is obvious.
My husband keeps saying, you go to school to learn, if you don't want to learn don't go to school. You can either do what the teacher says, learn to do what you do in school all day, or don't go.
I think that makes sense too. If he doesn't want to do the pull out, he's not going to want to do school for that long.
That's why I brought up the IAS. I've read the statistics are good for kids who are bored and want to accelerate and bad for kids who are forced into acceleration. I think the pre-k class is more fun than the kindy class. Given the choice between spending that hour of the day in language arts or pre-k
he wants the pre-k. When I told him "both classes are part of going to school, do you want to go or you don't want to go?". He wants to go.
Maybe I should ask, "if you couldn't go to your first class you could only go to your second class would you still want to go"?
I was surprised by the answer. He said without hesitation, "I would still want to go". I expected him to get hung up on debating the first part of the question before answering. But a few minutes later he got a certain lightbulb look on his face and said, "but if I couldn't go to (language arts teachers) class then I could only go to (pre-k) teachers class.
What is the wisdom on this? The language arts teacher is encouraging and says he needs just a little while to get used to the pace of school. (true- they sent home a library book for him to take a quiz on, he went back the next day & they said "we'll quiz you next week"). What is the wisdom for this? Is this the IAS contra-acceleration thing? Is this where he just needs to get used to going to school if he wants to go to school and get used to the way that the school does things?
