amelia was enrolled in discovery preschool last school year, and adored ms. holly and absolutely loved her friends. she started the reading program, usually reserved for the 4 year old class, and started to excel in math as well. by the end of the school year, she had completed set 2 and started set 3 in reading for all learners, advancing further than any of ms. holly's students in the past 10 years. she was tested with the 4 year old assessment and had full marks, including the ability to count to 100 (the goal before kindergarten is 20).
with the given information, i stressed over whether or not she would be challenged enough for the next school year. let's admit it, she's gifted. she has an incredible ability to focus and excel in everything she chooses to. i wanted to advocate for her and therefore enrolled her in challenger. over the summer, she completed two kindergarten/1st grade level summer workbooks (about 30 pages a day, and i couldn't get her to stop), completed reading for all learners set 3, 4, and 5, perfected her handwriting, was taking 1st grade level spelling tests, and started doing math worksheets as she could add her 1's and 2's fluently. i contacted the challenger headmistress to express my concerns of amelia being challenged with their pre-k curriculum, and she agreed to have her assessed to be placed into kindergarten within the first week.
so we proceeded. amelia was nervous and brave about going to a new school. she brought home new letters she had "learned" and her name traced over highlighter. this was incredibly frustrating for me to be paying challenger tuition and seeing lack of evidence of her actually being challenged.
still, i patiently waited until the second week of school to call the headmistress about the results of her assessment. she told me that she was assessed and though she was impressed with her phonic skills, 1) she lacked knowledge of how's and why's, 2) her fine motor skills were below average, and 3) she had been quiet during social time.
i politely refuted with 1) she knows the sounds of all the letters of the alphabet, her vowels and consonants, the 1 and 2 vowel rule, the hard and soft c and g rule; she might not be able to express it when you present it in a question that is unfamiliar to her, but she is able to follow the rules as she is reading, so...? 2) she can write all her upper and lowercase letters, numbers, she can write her full name and everyone in her immediate family's and all of her cousin's names unassisted, she takes spelling tests at home; how can her fine motor skills be improved at a pre-k/kindergarten level? 3) she is a naturally quiet girl. she just barely came out of her shell at her previous school, at church, etc. i believe she is overwhelmed in a new school, with new teachers, with 26 students in her class, but still reacting bravely and behaving appropriately for the situation.
she expressed that she was shocked that she could write her own name and promised she would pass this information on to her teachers. i wondered, how could they could tell me her fine motor skills were below average, when they had not even assessed her?
later that week, she brought this^^ come in her backpack. but the headmistress did not give me a call to followup with her being challenged. we scheduled an appointment with her at the end of the 3rd friday. in the meeting, she discussed how amelia never offers the answer in a group setting (even if she knows the answer), how amelia seeks for approval from her teacher to make sure she's doing her paperwork correctly, how she had challenged the students to take a spelling test, but amelia wrote all of her spelling words across in a row, instead of down in column, etc. i refuted that she's not arrogant and is probably still nervous in a new school setting, that she's a perfectionist and wants to make sure she's doing her paperwork correctly, and (wth??) why is the way she wrote her spelling test even related? i can teach her to write her words down in a column if this is a true concern.
but those were her feeble attempts at saying amelia couldn't advance to their kindergarten class. she told us that she was an excellent reader, and would be the most advanced reader in even their kindergarten program, but how many grades are we willing to skip her? she told us that to advance her to kindergarten, she would have to test and be at the top of the kindergarten grade level; that she felt it would be better for amelia to be the top-dog in pre-k, than in the middle of kindergarten. jer and i explained that we wouldn't want to skip her more than 1 grade, that it makes no sense that she had to be smarter than any other kindergartner to be in the class, that in our family we teach to do our best, and not necessarily to better than anyone else or to be the "top-dog", and that we would prefer her to be the in middle of a class for her to grow and stretch, than remain stationary at the top of a class. she pushed back that amelia was not as advanced in other areas of the curriculum; and jer told her she was adding 1's and 2's fluently. she was shocked and stated she had not known that.
finally, she told us their kindergarten program was completely full and we were welcome to try other challenger campuses. and then she offered the suggestion of homeschooling, since i was already doing it so well (this felt slightly patronizing). i felt like a crazy helicopter mom when we left. i distinctly remember my chest hurting and having trouble breathing, but not feeling panic or urge to cry; i still believe it was the help of my medication keeping a panic attack at bay. jer and i prayed and stressed over what was best for our babe. in the end, i emailed ms. holly at discovery kids preschool to see if she could consider opening up another slot for amelia. she replied that though she was strict about her 10-student class cap, she was willing make an exception for such a happy and well-behaved student. she emailed the other 10 sets of parents for their consent, who responded with an unanimous 'yes' to accept amelia back.
this was taken the week we withdrew amelia from challenger. she had earned her "alphabet crown" (for knowing her letters, their sounds, and the vowels) 4 weeks in (4 weeks too late, in our opinion). ms. holly informed us of amelia's acceptance on a tuesday and immediately made a plan with me to continue to challenge amelia. when i asked amelia if she wanted to go back to ms. holly next week, she told me, "no, i want to go back this week!" and so, we started that following friday. she was so, so happy to be back with her friends; she kept saying she was so excited to be with brooklyn and harper and penny and aiden and flynn again.
we made treat bags to say 'thank you.' i teared up with gratitude from the other parents and students and holly who had lovingly accepted her back. when she arrived, so many of her friends shouted, "millie's HERE! she's BACK!" ms. holly had told me that she always asks the students at the beginning of class, "who's missing?" and everyday they would say "millie!" and she would have to remind them that she had transferred schools.
what an adventure. i felt like i made a huge mess of things by ripping her out of a comfortable place, only to have to backpedal and return her. i wanted what was best for her, but it just felt like i created a disaster. when the dust settled, and i realized that parenting is a whole lot of trial and error. hopefully she'll realize this when she's grown and be forgiving of my errors. we're still unsure of what to do for kindergarten, but i figured regardless of what direction we choose, we could just take it easy and keep supplementing in whatever way we can at home.
i love this girl so much. i love her drive to learn and her determination to do her very best.
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