Summer School

Lian and I have been doing "summer school" lessons all summer long. There is no doubt that he needs to work on reading and writing and his homeroom teacher suggested that he would do better next year if he had his multiplication facts memorized. As during the regular school year, summer lessons were a super frustration. On top of not wanting to deal with the wall of writing each lesson seems to be, he also wanted to be outside or doing one of the many activities he was blogging about this summer. I persevered. He got weekends off and holidays and any day where we as a family could be enjoying summer outside the house. The lessons were less than onerous. I certainly wasn't about about to spend all summer locked in a learning battle. 

Reluctantly he has pushed through with whines and fusses. As far as he was concerned nothing has changed. It's all really hard. It takes too long. And when is he going to get a real summer vacation? I wish I could make him see it from my point of view. It's true his outward behavior is unchanged toward the books he was reading at the beginning of summer and the books he is reading at the end. However, the books at the beginning were specifically chosen well below grade level to give him practice at practicing reading and the books he is reading now are much closer to what he will encounter once third grade starts. Somewhere in the middle of summer we went from switching off reading every other page to each other, to him forgetting to stop reading so I could read my part, to him taking the book away from me and reading it all on his own. Whining about how hard it is, the whole time, I might add.  

We had an agreement at the beginning of summer that if he finished one book over the summer on his own, then I would read the rest of his reading list to him. It's the best part of our day. We have enjoyed many books together over the summer. A funny thing happened along the way though. He started getting impatient for our reading time together. For the first time ever in his young life, what happens next was more important that how hard it was to figure out the words. He picked up the books and began to read ahead. 

From what I can see, he is sounding out fewer words, his comprehension is up and he is reading harder material. Even though he still hasn't quite caught up, I would say being a "slave driver" over the summer has paid off. That became even more clear when he answered a multiplication question in a tv commercial the other day. He had the audacity to look at me with his innocent, not at all humble, smile and say, "Yeah, I learned that from copying my math facts, Cool Huh?" I should be grateful it won't occur to him until he has third graders of his own, that that is exactly why he has been "laboriously" copying math facts all summer long. Oh and copying things over is a great way to practice, oh, I don't know, writing!

I am so glad summer is coming to an end. Once school starts and we have a lesson plan in front of us, I can once again use the phrase, "Because your teacher said so!!", life will be so much easier. As I see it now, spelling is going to be his main challenge for this year. I have to give him credit for the way he sounds out what he writes (at least he's writing yeah?). Something tells me it's going to be a long year. Totally worth the effort, but really long.

This is not what I signed up for!

My son has a myriad of social and sensory issues that make life difficult for him.

Of all of them, I hate dyslexia the most. I watched my mother's heart break when she was told that at the age eight her son couldn't read. I watched as she dragged out my kindergarten homework, lovingly saved through the years, and used it to write a series of phonically based stories. I watched as she did what teachers over four grades had failed to do, teach my brother how to decipher the alphabet soup he saw and learn to read.  I don't blame the teachers for failing, from personal experience, I know it's difficult to teach around dyslexia. I blame them for advancing him to the next grade when it was obvious he wasn't ready.  I wasn't prepared when my son's school did the same to him in kindergarten. 

Taking a page out of Mom's book I took my son's education into my own hands and found him a school that would help him work through his issues. We enrolled him into a, thankfully free (though we would have paid millions), national online charter school, Connections Academy. There we found teachers with great advice. A curriculum not too different from the one he used in public school and motivation in the form of clubs and electives to encourage him to want to learn after the wars of kindergarten made him no longer willing to even try. He had the flexibility to excel in the areas he could and still take extra time for the lessons he needed extra help in. Finally, after beating my head against a wall for more than a year I had teachers who not only listened, but had the ability to act on my concerns. Let me be straight up here. My son's kindergarten teacher was a gem. She did the best she could with him and the restrictions her direct supervisors and school admin put on her. My issue with "them" is a story for another time.

After two years at CA we are making headway. He is still below grade level in reading and especially writing. His math skills are amazing, in his head. The moment he has to work through a problem on paper from beginning to end he forgets everything he knows about math. The numbers and concepts he knows so intimately in his head are a jumble to his eyes.  I know he has an uphill struggle but he is climbing far more often than he is sliding these days. Being his learning coach is not easy and gives me a profound appreciation for the people who choose to teach as a profession. It has caused gray hairs and anxiety attacks, there have even been tears, he cries sometimes too. We push on because I have seen what else is out there and I, like my mom before me, am my son's best advocate. He wants to learn everything there is to know. It's my job to help him find the tools to do so.