Last Tuesday, Keaton and Mike headed to soccer practice and I dropped Sully off at a babysitter's house. I then went to Sully's preschool "Parents Only" orientation. This preschool is the same on Keats attended last year but they did change things around a bit.
This year the pre-preschoolers and preschoolers are being combined into one class; last year the four & five-year-olds had class MWF and the three-year-olds had class TTh. Now all kids can go every day, three days, or two days per week. It is the same teachers doing basically the same thing but it basically gave parents a little more flexibility in what days their child attends school.
Teacher Jennifer is the main pre-preschool teacher and Mrs. Moss is the preschool teacher. Mrs. Moss is allergic to peanuts (very allergic) and last year we were told there was a "no nuts" policy. (luckily this only applied to food and not to the parents! lol) I assumed, since Mrs. Moss is still teaching in the classroom, that the same rule would apply. Not so! I didn't see the "no nut" policy written in the snack/lunch section so I asked about it; I was told they had no kids with allergies this year...um....I hated to be the one to break it to them but yes they do have a kid with alleries signed up for the class! I was in the middle of a room-full of parents and you wouldn't have believed the collective moan/sigh from everyone. There were lots of "but but but" and "can we send nuts on the days the allergic child isn't in class?" Grrrr. Teacher Jennifer began by saying, okay, no nuts...but the parents persisted and it turned into some sort of vague "well maybe I will send nuts on the day the allergic child isn't in class" rule.
The vagueness scared me in that I KNOW that the frantic parent packing a lunch two minutes before they need to leave to take their kid to class is NOT going to stop and consider the day of the week and are nuts allowed or not. They are just going to slap together a PB&J and not say a word. My concern here is that Sullivan doesn't know a nut or nut-butter from anything else. I'm sure the teachers are there watching the kids during meal time but I also know how fast Sully is at climbing up onto the table and reaching for something on our plates before we can bat an eye. ..and if you are trying to watch 20 kids at once you are not going to see everything.
So...at this point I was pretty sure I was going to withdraw Sully from the program....then Teacher Jennifer said that the kids are all required to go into the bathroom themselves and pull up/down their pants and undies, the boys must use the urinals for peeing, and they have to pull everything back up. The staff are not allowed to go inside the bathrooms at all. They cannot go in and help the kids with any part of pottying.
Um. Not only does Sully want zero to do with going potty, he's never even seen a urinal in his life. He only goes into womens bathrooms with me when we are out & about.
The logical conclusion: Sully isn't ready for this preschool. I emailed Teacher Jennifer and called the school district and pulled him out of the class.
BUT...Melina-the-World's-Best-Babysitter is starting up a preschool in her home this year so she can teach her soon-to-be four-year-old daughter instead of having to pay for her to go to preschool outside their home. There is another little boy in the class that is just a few days younger than Sullivan that is also in the class. I called and talked to her about Sully attending her class and she was all for it! Yay. He will start October 5th. The timing is going to be a little rough with getting Keats to school as well, but Melina knows all about Sully's allergies and his lack of potty-training...and she still loves him. ;o)
I will either sign Sullivan up for the "regular" preschool next year or may try to get him into Keaton's old-old school if they have the same teacher Keaton had. Rumors circulate that she was moving to the East Coast...but hopefully not!
Keaton is loving school. He doesn't mind at all that the teacher speaks only Spanish in class. Actually, 10% of the time is in English...but in a 2-1/2 hour class, that is not much. He came home on Wednesday and said, "I know what Daddy's favorite color is; his favorite color is ROJO!" So he is apparently catching on. ;o)
We went to Open House at the school last night. It was a real eye-opener for Mike as he had no idea how much this program really is in Spanish. Everything in the room is labeled in Spanish and the teacher spoke LOTS of Spanish while we were in the room last night. Senora Stewart talked to the group of parents for about 15 minutes; during her talk she would say something in Spanish...like a whole explanation of something they do in the class...and then say it in English. She did not say "and what that means in English is..." but rather said the very same thing in both languages. During class, the teachers speak Spanish and DO NOT TRANSLATE!! Can you believe that?? We were told that if they translated, the kids wouldn't need to learn the other language. Makes sense. They want the kids to struggle to understand, look at the teachers for meaning, look at their environment to find the meaning, look at their friends to see if they understand. This awareness and struggle is apparently how we all learn our native language and this is why the program is called a "Spanish immersion" program.
I'm hoping to learn a bit as Keaton learns as well...though I suspect I would need to sit in on each class in order to really learn....I am SO glad Keaton has this opportunity!
2 comments:
I think this is really fabulous. The children waste so much time in schools nowadays that kids who are bright are often bored or have alot of wasted time.I would much rather see it be filled with an amazing program like this.
Right now if kids take Spanish immersion classes all through jr. high and High School they are really not fluent but an immersion program for a long time period would be a totally different story. It also works another part of the brain.
I cannot see anything but positives.
I just saw your response to my post now--I didn't know that "other" people would read this so never check. Lol.
We're now in first grade in the Spanish immersion program. I'm still very glad we have this opportunity. My son will tell me "Mom, I really don't understand much of what the teacher is saying to us." Last week I sat in his classroom for a while. The kids were in a group sitting on the floor & listening to the teacher read a book (in Spanish). My son was very obviously understanding what was going on in the story. He was smiling and interactive, calling out responses at times. It was great to see that-- I know he's going to be bilingual some day!!
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