My son Jaxson is in 1st grade. He is going to a private school called Choice, where they believe parents are students’ first guide in education and they allow us to lead our children’s learning. Jaxson has been struggling with reading this year. He’s been behind and his dad and I have been able to talk with his teachers and work out plans that work for him. Sometimes it means he does some of his language at home and it counts for him passing it off. Sometimes I am able to go into his class and help him stay focused. With extra help from both his teachers and at home he has gained more confidence in himself that he can read.
Here’s an example of how choosing the best fit for our child is helping him to thrive and achieve. I was in his class helping him finish what’s called a language drawer. For each drawer there are certain words that he has to be able to read, write, and spell. At the end of the entire chest of drawers (they are color coded) he has to do something called fluency and comprehension. Comprehension are worksheets that are read alone, then questions are answered to check understanding. Fluency is a timed reading of all the words from that color of drawers. His goal that day was to pass off both. After completing his comprehension, the class was able to go do games if they completed their math and language. He decided he wanted to finish his goal and he had a few minutes left of that work cycle. I sat down and helped him. He was having a hard time with some of the more difficult words and so he had to take a couple tries. He was reading on one of his tries and had just one word left when the timer went off. He was so close and, at the same time, the chime went off for the class to clean up their work so they could do circle time.
Jaxson was devastated. He had worked so hard and was so close, but he just barely missed the mark. It was so hard for him. He broke down in tears and just wanted me to hug him. His teacher came to check on him and when I explained she was very understanding. Jaxson started to become so upset. He started to say he just wanted to go home and didn’t want to be at school. I was able to talk to him about the possibility that we could go to another room and try to do his fluency again. When talking to him it was very apparent that he just wanted to pass off his fluency and he was hoping to go home to do it.
Once he calmed down we went and talked to his teacher about our options. She was very accommodating. We were able to go to another quiet room and work on his fluency. After a couple more tries he finally got all the words read with seven seconds to spare! He was so excited. He was able to feel the power of resilience and not giving up and how, even when things look hard and he wants to give up, if he continues, he can do hard things.
I am so grateful he gets to go to a school that focuses on these types of lessons instead of the “things” that need to be done. They always support the students and us as parents in what we feel is best for our kids, and they have a great culture of perseverance and doing hard things.