First day of school

We survived our first day of school!  It was the first day of classes for Tim and Daniel both, and a big day as well for Esther and me, since I accompanied Daniel to school all day and Esther went to daycare all day for the first time ever.  (Actually Tim picked her up and took her out for lunch, but she arrived at daycare early in the morning and didn't leave until late afternoon, so it was a long day for her.)  Everyone did well.  Tim was very pleased with how his classes went, and Esther apparently had a wonderful time.  As for Daniel, well, I'll start from the beginning.

Daniel is definitely in seventh grade.  He is definitely going to get ESL pull-out services every day, but they haven't started yet since his teacher is new and is being oriented.  Daniel's current classes are reading and language arts (a 90-minute period), math (a 90-minute period), science, geography, choir and art.  I don't know what class he will be pulled out of for ESL, but it sounds like art is the most likely candidate.  The school is still trying to get a handle on how best to help him, which means that his classes keep getting switched around.  (How I wish the administrative staff had come back to work earlier in the summer so that we could have gotten this all sorted out BEFORE he started school!)  The classes he went to today were from a now-outdated schedule, so tomorrow he will have all the same subjects, but his language class will be at a different time and his science and geography classes will be at a different time AND with different teachers.  I think he connected really well with his science teacher, so I'm sorry for that switch, but it will allow all of his teachers to meet as a team and work together on figuring out how best to teach him.

Today was a ZOO.  It reminded me of teaching in China, when schedules weren't announced until the last minute, and then were likely to be changed.  First all the students went to homeroom.  The homeroom teacher (who I love!) cranked through a bunch of paperwork, then was interrupted by the bell abruptly summoning 7th grade to the auditorium.  So we all herded down there, listened to a welcome-to-school-and-here-are-the-rules speech from the principle and a new vice principle, then headed back up for more homeroom.  It turned out that much of what remained to be covered in homeroom had already been covered by the vice principle, so after a little more business we all ended up cooling our heels in homeroom while waiting for the announcement that students could start going to regular classes.  Anyway, I had a nice talk with Daniel's homeroom teacher, who is now going to be his geography teacher as well.  Daniel got a little bored, so I asked her if she had any jobs he could do, and she got him putting tennis balls on chair feet so they won't scratch up the floor when they slide around.  Daniel loves few things better than a job to do, so that suited him just fine, and several other students thought that it looked like fun and joined in.  Then the bell rang and we started a series of whirlwind visits to morning classes.  I kid you not, I think students got about ten minutes in each class, not even enough time for teachers to finish going over the syllabus.  I stayed behind after the language arts class to talk to the teacher (Daniel assuring me that he could find his way to the auditorium for his next class), and when the next bell rang just a few minutes later, I had no idea whether Daniel would wait for me in the auditorium, come back to find me in his language classroom, or go on to his next class.  I also wasn't positive which his next class was supposed to be.  Ack!!  And of course, the school has looooong hallways, and it took me several minutes just to get to the auditorium and confirm that he wasn't there any more.  Anyway, he had the sense to show someone his schedule and let them point him in the right direction, so he turned up at his next classroom only a little bit late.  He did not seem to be unnerved by the experience, although he did tell me that he had to ask a lot of people for directions.  (Mind you, his English is still essentially nil, so he must have been doing this by pantomime.)  After four ten-fifteen minute classes, we finally were summoned to lunch.  Daniel's teacher at the time asked a classmate to help him get to the cafeteria, and this classmate walked him back to his locker to get his lunch money and then made sure that he found the cafeteria alright.  We were in the last five people to get lunch, so I had to eat so fast I could hardly taste the food.  Daniel said the one lunch wasn't enough; he would have liked to have two.  I'll have to ask the school if that's an option for him to buy two lunches.

After lunch the 7th graders went on their regular schedule, so we went from classes that were far too short for the amount of material teachers were trying to cover, to classes that were far too long.  Daniel actually fell asleep during his ninety-minute math class, not surprising since the teacher was talking and talking and he had no idea what she was saying.  She is a former French teacher, though, and she did a good job opening the students' eyes to Daniel's classroom experience by starting out her teaching in French!  Then she pointed out that this is what it would feel like to be plopped down in a classroom in a foreign country.  Several of Daniel's teachers said something about him or asked me to introduce him, and it seemed like the students really "got it."  Several students came up and introduced themselves to Daniel or said "Hi Daniel!" on their way past, and in one class when the kids were playing around at the end of class they deliberately included Daniel in their play.  I have been very, very pleased by how people have responded to Daniel!  I was also very, very pleased that he managed to behave appropriately almost all day, despite being bored and confused, that he didn't do anything too weird, and that he was comfortable finding his own way around when he needed to.  He is determined that he wants to ride the school bus, so I'm going to wait with him at the bus stop tomorrow morning and then let Tim give me a ride into school and meet up with Daniel there.  After today, I am pretty confident that he can get himself to where he needs to be, and if not, he can get directions.

This school year ahead is definitely going to be challenging, but...right now I'm feeling very hopeful about it!