School House Rock...

The kids have been in school for a month now.  I think we are settling in to a routine.  

Praise be.

So I the spirit of keeping the grandparents up to date on our little life, thought I'd give a little recap of school and how things have been going so far.  

First, we are super excited about being in this school system.  Having spent the last five years in quite the wealthy, white bubble, we were anxious to get into something more diverse.  Not sure I would have said that five or ten years ago.  And not because I was opposed to diversity.  More because you don't realize how much you will miss something until it's no longer there.  

Our school system is almost an even breakdown of 30% African American, 30% Hispanic and 30% white.  Our elementary school is a Title 1 school with 70% on free lunch program.

And yet, they are SUCCESSFUL.  

Actually, they are beyond successful.  They are KILLING. IT.  

During my half-marathon training runs, I listened to a "This American Life" episode titled, "The Problem We All Live With."  In it, the journalists and educators discussed the one successful tool for bridging the gap between poor and wealthy schools and success rates.  More specifically, between white and black.  And the one thing that has proven to work is the one thing we never talk about anymore.

Integration.

It was eye-opening.  

The entire episode made me a little uncomfortable.  Not because I disagreed but because the conversation had to be had at all.  But it does.  And it will continue to be a necessary narrative.  Perhaps more now than ever.

What we did not want for our children is for them to live in a bubble of wealth and people who look, think and act just like they do.  We wanted them to be in a classroom with people of all colors and all faiths and all cultures.  

Our world grows increasingly larger and simultaneously smaller.  My grandparents' world consisted of the people in their town.  Maybe their state.  Sometimes, their country.  My world was slightly larger.  I mean, I got my first email address in college.  So clearly, I was globally aware.  But my kids?  Their world will be enormous.  They will have unprecedented access to other cultures and viewpoints and faiths.  

Letting them figure out how to navigate those differences when they've spent a childhood void of any sort of cross-cultural, cross-racial exposure seems, at its best, naive, and at it's worst, fearful.

The good news?  God knew our hearts.  He knew the exact right school, exact right neighborhood, exact right street to put us on.  

Our neighborhood sits directly across the street from Aubrey Kate's elementary school.  So we walk.  Twice a day.  To and from.  Honestly, it feels so "Mayberry-esq" to me.  Like we're in a small town where everyone can walk everywhere.  It's about half a mile from our door to her school door.  That's two miles of walking a day.  But, heavens, we're doing it so slowly, it takes four miles worth of time.

Kindergartners are not known for their great sense of urgency.  

And AK, especially, has never been in a hurry to one single thing in her entire life.  

Rhys finds himself mostly unable to walk either to or from.  Sometimes he can manage to walk to but not from.  Other times not from but to.  So he rides in the stroller.  

Listen.  Don't judge me.  It's not the parenting hill I want to die on.  I'm not gonna push him into his first college lecture.  It's fine.

(And let's not forget he's four.  Two miles a day is a bit much for four year old legs.  No matter how much energy he has.  Plenty of full-grown adults don't walk two miles a day.)

(I'm not pointing fingers or naming names.  In case you're feeling all offended.)

One of AK's classmates lives across the street from us.  Those girls have become fast friends.  She walks with us to and from every day.  Listening to them talk is the MOST ADORABLE THING EVER.  I can't even stand some of their conversations.  

I've also met several other mommas in the neighborhood.  And a couple of grandparents.  We all walk at the same time.  Obviously.  I love getting to visit with them.  We're planning a breakfast one morning after we drop the kids off.  

Y'all.  Neighbors.  Real.  Actual.  Neighbors.  It's an answer to prayer.  

AK loves her teacher but, true to AK form, she doesn't enjoy all the kids who don't follow the rules.  Like last year, she simply cannot understand why kids talk during lunch instead of eat.  Or can't manage to obey the rules in art and so the class doesn't get to finish their projects.  I'm not entirely sure the teachers are guilt-tripping the whole class based on the behavior of a few but AK is feeling that unfairness strongly.

Bless her.  

The girl came into the world with a heighten sense of justice and injustice.  Not simply right and wrong.  More of an understanding of things not being equal.  She notices it everywhere.  I notice it no where.  Or at least a lot less than I realized.  Anyway, she has a hard time telling me about the unicorn project she was finally able to complete in art class because she has to...HAS TO...tell me why it took three weeks to finish it to start with.  Has to talk about the other kids taking too many bathroom breaks.  

She'll say, "Well, we have a situation with the bathroom and the overuse of the privilege."  

I feel like that's her teacher talking but good night, AK can totally say that all by herself.

And as expected, AK is struggling to connect with the other kids.  Her teacher thinks this is because she's done Kinder before and is more mature than the other kids.  

I don't.  

I know this to be the exact reason we had her repeat the year to start with.  The work is easy to her.  So she says.  She'll complain about working on her numbers because she already knows her numbers.  But working with sight words?  We're still not quite there.  However, since the work is not incredibly taxing or even new, she's able to just be her usual anxious self.  My fear was if the work was hard and she was anxious, she could easily fall behind.  

This way, she's only navigating adjusting to a bigger class size and kids not following the rules.  

On the other hand, there is Rhys.  

And he is nothing but joyful and excited and loving school.

Rhys is learning how to play well with others.  He has a class full of boys and, well, they play.  Hard.  He likes his teacher and he likes the other boys.  He's already declared one boy as his "best friend."  But he also comes home with a zillion tall tales about hitting and punching and being attacked by bears.  I can't tell what's true and what's not.  

Although, obviously he hasn't been attacked by a bear at his preschool.  

His imagination is so vibrant and he's definitely in the stage of telling stories.  Not because he means to be lying.  Just because he's imagining.  If there has been an issue, and there's only been one where he scratched his arm on a piece of equipment, his teacher tells me.  The rest, I have to listen and take with a grain of four year old salt.

Rhys' preschool is a new concept to us.  It's located inside a gymnastics building.  They have a classroom and the whole preschool setup.  But they believe (as do I), kids learn through play.  Most everything they learn is through a game of some sort.  And if for some reason, they are having a hard time sitting for story-time, the teacher simply takes a break and they all go run and climb and jump in the gym.  

It's like heaven in preschool form for our active little guy.  

Now, the teacher doesn't take any slack off the kiddos.  She runs a tight ship.  But she has a fantastic understanding of inattention, fidgeting, hyper-activity and general misbehavior as a motivation for change.  It's a developmental milestone.  Being able to sit for longer and longer periods of time.  Doing more writing and coloring.  

I remember when AK went from her three year old class to her four year old class.  She was MISERABLE.  And I genuinely believe it's because she was not yet ready for pre-K work.  She did not enjoy more writing and less free play.  She hated the additional structure to center time.  She spent the entire first semester crying almost every day after school.

When you know better, you do better.

I see those same tendencies in Rhys.  He JUST this summer decided coloring with a crayon was worthy of his time.  He loves it.  It's not his go to activity but he does enjoy doing it.  But no way he's ready to try writing his name.  Heck, he doesn't even know his letters and numbers.  

The other preschools in town were pretty set on making him go into the four year old pre-K class.  I could not imagine doing that again.  I'd already seen AK fight it.  And we thought she was ready.  We KNOW Rhys is not.  This preschool allows Rhys to be Rhys.  He's learning his letters, practicing his writing, coloring AND climbing a rope ladder.  

Rhys gets to just be a kid.  Sweaty, active, energetic KID.

Plus.  There's the additional benefit of the teacher being from the UK.  So she pronounced and recognized Rhys' name right away.  She actually said, "Oh!  The Welsh spelling of the name!  Brilliant!"

Listen.  You had me at "Welsh," Ms. Ally.

Just like AK's school, Rhys' preschool is a rainbow of colors and cultures.  I adore it. 

Other than school, both kids decided to take gymnastics this semester.  We love watching "American Ninja Warrior" in the summer.  I genuinely believe that motivated them to give gymnastics a try.  They take from the gym where Rhys goes to school.  That means we get a serious discount for his classes.  And overall, this is significantly cheaper than dance classes. 

AK isn't entirely sold.  She likes it okay.  She's declared the beam to be sooooo easy.  Although, she falls off.  Bars are her favorite.  Bless her, she's as limber as her parents.  Which is to say, not at all.  I never even learned how to do a cartwheel.  I'm hoping she at least learns that much.  It'll help her when she decides to go back to dance.  And I feel certain that will happen.  We just gave her the hard lecture about once she committed to doing gymnastics, she had to do it the entire semester.  

For his part, Rhys is IN LOVE with it.  He is just so darn good in class.  He follows directions and listens.  It's a thing of beauty.  I think once he gets a little older, I'll see about getting him into a more of a Ninja Warrior type class.  They have those now.  Complete with competitions in certain age groups.  He'll excel at this kind of stuff.  Being that he could dead climb the kitchen cabinets at 18 months old.  Obviously, he's part monkey.

The kids are mostly a delight.  Or a nightmare.  There's no in-between really.  They're either playing well or we're coloring together or even "cooking" together.  And life is so sweet.

Or, I'm a glorified umpire.  

Which is my least favorite title.  

We are excited around here, though.  I expect this to be just the best year.  Honestly.  

And you can be guaranteed lots of hilarious material from those walks to and from school.