School Daze -- 2016 edition

Gracie started kindergarten about ten days ago.  She's in a mornings-only Mandarin Chinese immersion class.  I think it's wonderful, but she's baffled by it all.  Her teacher does not communicate to the children in English -- ever.  So, the "What did you do at school today?" question gets answered with a blank stare -- probably the same one she gives her teacher every day.  This child has huge brown eyes with ludicrously long lashes, so once she starts understanding and communicating, she'll be the embodiment of an anime character.  (Yes, horrified people, I know anime is Japanese, but to my non-tonal-language-ears they sound the same.)

Rosie thinks her teacher is fantastic and hops off the bus in the afternoons in her usual happy-go-lucky spirits.  I wish I could say more about it, but that's just the way things are.  She's happy in herself and I have no intentions of messing with that by analyzing it.

Cami doesn't really talk to us about junior high.  We know she doesn't have any classes with her friends from last year, but hangs with them at lunch time.  She also has made a friend to include in the lunch crowd, a new student who shares her K-Pop obsession.  She has a British science teacher, which thrills her.  (He's from Manchester, so I suspect there a bit of the Lancashire/Yorkshire teasing going on....and I have noticed that when she comes home from school her accent is a touch stronger.)

Jason and I got an email from the school telling us that they'd like to include Cami in the accelerated math program.  I was that child who felt like I had to be the best at everything, so her non-interest  feels foreign.  She simply doesn't want to be bothered with the extra homework.  Had I not been present at her birth, I really would question how I'm her mother.  But it's highly unlikely that three different hospitals on two continents messed up four times in sending me home with the wrong baby...and that they'd all look alike.  So, she must be mine.

Jason starts teaching tomorrow: advanced logic and a graduate seminar.  (A three-hour grad seminar in the late afternoon -- my grad school nightmare.)

Graham starts his how-are-we-ever-going-to-pay-for-private-school?-private-school at the end of the month.  It's really a miracle, because we feared we'd be paying out of pocket for most of it.  But, extra funding came through & we're ok.  The best part is he thanked us spontaneously for arranging for him to attend a school "without homework."

Drumroll, please:  I'm back at school this year!

Quieter:  No, I'm not heading back to grad school.

Fancy statement:  I'm going to be the Literacy Teacher's Assistant for Primary Students to the school director at Graham's school.

Short form:  I'll be teaching 5 to 7 years olds to love books and writing.  Then I'll watch them play on the school playground for an hour.  (It sounds a lot like what I do already, plus a paycheck.)

At present, I am taking the absolutely unorganized library and turning it into a "hey, I can find things" space.  (Glad I had that summer job as a library page when I was 16.)

So, back to school for me...15 years after I left grad school.  Reading kids' books...the same thing I went to grad school to do.

And so, with all six of in four different schools, I had to write an hour-by-hour schedule for drop-off/pick-up/after school activities.  It's insane.  Thank goodness for the weekends.