My First Born Goes to School Full-Time!
My first born. My son. My carbon copy physically and mentally. My constant companion for the last 5 years, including 10 months in utero. The boy who opened up my heart in a way I didn't think possible. That boy, started school on a full-time basis on August 20 and my heart can barely handle it.
I'm thrilled that I have kept him alive this long! As any parent knows, most of parenting is keeping a kid from killing themselves on accident. But now he's starting his journey into the big bad world and there is nothing I can do about it. I cannot protect him from mean children, or the effects of having a teacher with whom he is incompatible with (although so far that hasn't happened, except for the last two months of pre-school last year).
Chase starting in public school was not ideal. I wanted to be able to homeschool him through elementary. My vision of museum trips, outdoor adventures, hands-on experiences, while making life long memories had to take a back seat to me working. If I wasn't going to be able to homeschool, I wanted to be able to provide him with a private school education but, that didn't work out either. So here we are, in my worse case scenario, starting public school in the Los Angeles Unified
School District - the second largest school district in the US with a boatload of problems.
But so far things are going really well. I have only emailed his teacher 4-6 times and she has been communicative and gracious. She also adores my little guy. His school is extremely diverse:
(Graph from Greatschools.org)
This means that he'll grow up knowing people come in different shapes, colors and sizes and there is nothing wrong with that.
I had my first PTA meeting which took me right back to my Model UN days in high school and the school's spirit wear is really cute, I've already bought a shirt for Chase and myself which I found a bit of pleasure in as when I was in school I was never allowed to buy spirit wear. Our PTA needs to fundraise over $97k in order to pay for all the arts provided by the school. Music, choir, field trips and transportation, the school's garden, all this is paid for by the PTA so I'm excited to get my hands dirty and help. It sucks that the district only focuses on Reading and Math, but at the same time I think it gives parents an opportunity to really invest time, effort and energy into their children's education and that's been shown to have a positive effect on the children's performance in school. As a student, I remember being in awe of the parents who were at school functions helping out, I thought they must really love their children. I want Chase to be on the other side of that, I want him to know he may be in school, but his parents are still 100% invested in him.
So here we are, Chase starting school, Harper right on his tail, and me being pleasantly surprised that my worse case scenario is actually turning out the best fit for me. It's almost as if somebody had a master plan in place (thanks Jesus).
 |
I'm thrilled that I have kept him alive this long! As any parent knows, most of parenting is keeping a kid from killing themselves on accident. But now he's starting his journey into the big bad world and there is nothing I can do about it. I cannot protect him from mean children, or the effects of having a teacher with whom he is incompatible with (although so far that hasn't happened, except for the last two months of pre-school last year).
Chase starting in public school was not ideal. I wanted to be able to homeschool him through elementary. My vision of museum trips, outdoor adventures, hands-on experiences, while making life long memories had to take a back seat to me working. If I wasn't going to be able to homeschool, I wanted to be able to provide him with a private school education but, that didn't work out either. So here we are, in my worse case scenario, starting public school in the Los Angeles Unified
School District - the second largest school district in the US with a boatload of problems.
But so far things are going really well. I have only emailed his teacher 4-6 times and she has been communicative and gracious. She also adores my little guy. His school is extremely diverse:
(Graph from Greatschools.org)
This means that he'll grow up knowing people come in different shapes, colors and sizes and there is nothing wrong with that.
I had my first PTA meeting which took me right back to my Model UN days in high school and the school's spirit wear is really cute, I've already bought a shirt for Chase and myself which I found a bit of pleasure in as when I was in school I was never allowed to buy spirit wear. Our PTA needs to fundraise over $97k in order to pay for all the arts provided by the school. Music, choir, field trips and transportation, the school's garden, all this is paid for by the PTA so I'm excited to get my hands dirty and help. It sucks that the district only focuses on Reading and Math, but at the same time I think it gives parents an opportunity to really invest time, effort and energy into their children's education and that's been shown to have a positive effect on the children's performance in school. As a student, I remember being in awe of the parents who were at school functions helping out, I thought they must really love their children. I want Chase to be on the other side of that, I want him to know he may be in school, but his parents are still 100% invested in him.
So here we are, Chase starting school, Harper right on his tail, and me being pleasantly surprised that my worse case scenario is actually turning out the best fit for me. It's almost as if somebody had a master plan in place (thanks Jesus).
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| Walking to school |
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| First art project on the first day of school |
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