Kick-Ass K's and other troubles

The new school is both highly rated and highly troublesome for Kallan.

Kallan continues to have issues at her new school and with her new teacher.  Not big issues (the kind I could address by stomping angrily into the school and demanding action), but little issues.  Lots of them.  The sorts of issues, which, if I intervene on her behalf in each case, make me look like a crazy ex-home-schooling Mom who is having trouble letting go.  But it is distressing and heart-wrenching to see Kallan be so hesitant and nervous and overwhelmed.

It’s just not the Kallan I know.

I did not fully appreciate how much the classroom experience changes between 1^st grade (when Kallan was last in a regular classroom) and mid-year 3^rd grade.  Plus, she’s in a combined 3^rd-4^th grade class, which makes her feel as though she’s in the bottom half of the group and doing badly even when she is supposed to be in the bottom half of the group because she is in 3^rd grade.

And she seems to be constantly on the look-out for things that may get her in trouble, which she wants to avoid at all costs.  I told you this is not the Kallan I know.  For the last three days, she has come home with her lunch almost entirely uneaten.  I assumed she was socializing or that she didn’t care for the lunch I had packed her, but when she came home yesterday starving and sat down immediately to eat her packed lunch, I asked her what was up.

There is no cafeteria, so the kids eat at their desks.  It turns out that the first 15 minutes of their half hour lunch-time is also show-and-tell time, in which the kids are free to talk about and pass around objects they have brought from home.  (Maj would be speaking up here about the stupidity of passing germy objects around while you are eating.)  Germs issues aside, this is also time when the kids are supposed to be eating quietly so that they can hear one another’s stories.  Apparently, a few days ago, one little boy got in big trouble for making a lot of noise with his Velcro lunch-bag fastener during show and tell (I am imagining that he opened and closed it 25 or 30 times before the teacher snapped).

Kallan took note, and so now will not open her own Velcro enclosured lunch bag until after the whole “show-and-tell” portion of lunch is completed for fear she will be punished for disrupting the class.  Which means that she has only 10-12 minutes to eat lunch before the teacher announces that it is time to pack up, wash up, and go outside to play.  Who is this scared little creature who has replaced my bold and sassy Kallan?

I suggested that she just open her lunch bag right at the beginning of lunchtime, before people had started talking, and she just began to wail about how I don’t understand anything.  Sigh.  So this morning we packed her lunch in a large purple-patterned fabric bag she adores.  It won’t keep her lunch very cold, but the sound of ripping Velcro is replaced with a silent single hook.

Some of the problems are just so stupid they make me want to shake her.  She came home several days in a row telling me that the teacher was giving her (and only her) extra school-work on the days the class did “inside recess” because of the rain.  I asked Kallan several times what was going on, and she had no explanation.  I finally thought to ask her what all of the other kids were doing during these inside recesses, and she told me they were coloring and painting and using markers.  I asked her why she didn’t take out her own art supplies, and she explained that she couldn’t because she didn’t have any supplies at her desk.

Which explains why Kallan was getting extra work – her teacher is giving her extra worksheets to do in this down-time because clearly Kallan’s mom hasn’t gotten out to the store to get Kallan her school supplies yet.

Except Kallan’s mom did buy Kallan all of the school supplies on the list the school provided when we arrived, including art supplies.  I purchased notebooks, crayons, markers (both fat and skinny), glue, scissors, and paints.  So how is it possible that she doesn’t have any art supplies at school?  Simple . . . she never took them to school, and instead left them in the front table’s top drawer.  What is up with that?

And then there’s the sad issue of the “k’s.”  Kallan makes her lower case k as she has been taught, as I was taught when I was a kid.  One tall straight line as a side, and then two smaller angled straight lines kicking out from the tall guy.  It’s one of Kallan’s favorite letters because it starts her name.

Except at the new school, they don’t make their k’s that way.  Instead, the lower-case printed k is a sort of half-assed cursive k.  It has the tall side, but then a big rounded top lump and a curved lower leg.  Every single one of Kallan’s lower-case “kicking out” k’s, on every one of her assignments, is circled in red.  Which means that even if she gets 100% on an assignment, the red circles ruin the triumph.  She cannot seem to remember this small change, and has to go back through her work to erase and then replace each individual k she has used.

Is it me, or it that just nuts?

Every night, she has more homework than her sister.  I haven’t yet gotten a handle on whether this means that Kallan has too much homework or that her 5^th grade sister has too little.  But something’s off.

Every day as I wave goodbye to the girls as the school bus roars away, I silently wish Kallan a smooth and confident and successful day.

But as I walked home from the bus stop this morning, I noticed that someone had stepped in dog poo (dog poo seems to be a running theme in my tales of Oregon).  Not from our dogs, just so you know.  I always clean up after our dogs.  But anyway, there was a large squashed pile, and then little bits of yuck clearly leading a path back to the school bus stop.  It was impossible to tell if the stinky-footed person was a child or an adult.  It wasn’t me (I checked).

I just hope it wasn’t Kallan.  Her days are tough enough lately without the scent of dog poo wafting after her as she tries to make it through the day unnoticed by her big-voiced teacher.

I’ve been feeling lately as though the move has broken something in Kallan, and I want the old Kallan back.  This is just a phase, right?

Update later in the afternoon:  Kallan came home from school today with poo-less shoes and an invitation to a sleepover birthday party this weekend.  All is right in her world!

For now.

3^rd grade is more stressful than I expected.  I need a nap.