There will be a lot of first days of school for Kaleb and Kenzie during the course of their lives…
But there will only be one first, first day of school.
The first, first day of school is the first day of school for the first time for both of them.
Continue reading<<Back to School – Part 2
<<Back to School – Part 1
I hadn’t planned to do a third post on Kaleb starting school. But at the risk of over-indulging my emotions on the subject, there are some other developments related to Kaleb starting big kid’s school.
Maybe you can give me some feedback.
Since Kaleb started school he has started calling me “Dad.” When he first started he would say, “Are you my dad?” but he knew the answer to the question.
I think it was just his way of asking if it was is it okay to call me “Dad.”
But Kaleb and Kenzie know they have a biological mom and dad; they know who they are; and I’ve never tried to tell them otherwise.
But I knew this day might come although I thought it would be with Sissy. Of course, she is going to do what Kaleb does.
Bye Ms. Chrissy, Hello big kids school!
Kaleb’s excitement over starting big kid’s school eventually gave way to fear and apprehension.
The night before school started Kaleb was uncontrollable and practically inconsolable. He was overcome with the fear of change, doing things differently, trying something new!
And “acted out” those fears with some bizarre toddler behavior!
And so we had to have a long talk that night before he went to sleep.
He didn’t want to leave his teacher, Ms. Chrissy. He’s one of those children that gets quite attached to his teacher.
I had to reassure him during our talk that he would see Chrissy almost everyday when he returned to the daycare center. (The teacher in his new class at daycare said he, unfortunately, didn’t get to see Chrissy when he returned to daycare after the first day of school and he had a “meltdown.”)
But the one thing that I said in my pep talk about going to big kid’s school that helped him hold it together was that he gets to ride the school bus from school to daycare.
If he stands straight, he will fall over!
School starts in a couple of weeks and Kaleb will be in Pre-K and, I admit, I’m getting a little emotional.
Okay, maybe more than a little emotional!
I suppose one of the reasons that I’m emotional is that this will be the first time that Kaleb and Kenzie are separated. Actually, they’ve never really done any activity apart from each other from waking up in the morning to going to bed at night.
I’m also apprehensive about establishing a new routine. It’s not that I’m not open to change, but rather I’ve got a routine that works as fragile as it may be. It seems that it only takes a small mishap to throw things out of kelter.
And now we’re facing a BIG adjustment!
The new school year is starting soon and so I would like to devote this blog post to all the teachers and share something I read recently that, to me, describes the perfect teacher.
There’s always been teachers in my family.
My father was a teacher. I have aunts, uncles, cousins, and brothers who are or have been teachers.
My wife was a teacher. My own career in education began as a classroom teacher.
I respect teachers. I appreciate teachers. They have a tough job that’s not getting any easier.
So the description of the perfect teacher that I’m about to share isn’t a checklist of character traits or bullet points of teaching methods.
Rather, I’ve chosen to publish the words of a student who wrote about one of her teachers many years later after she had grown up, had a family of her own, and had herself become a teacher. This is what she had to say about her perfect teacher:
“[She] was my third grade teacher and she will forever hold a special place in my heart. I visited her FaceBook page today, as often times I had done in the past. I was dropping in [on Facebook] to let her know I was thinking of her and to thank her for being the utmost nurturing teacher and mother- figure that she was to me. Continue reading
Poppy's New Adventure 