Back to School

We put the kids on the school bus again this morning. Summer vacation is finally over and they are back at Valentine Hills Elementary School for another year. We're happy they're back, but we're still a little skeptical about their school, based on some of the things that happened last year.

My son Ben is a fifth grader and this will be his last year in elementary school. He is nearly eleven now and he is, like many kids his age, really at an odd place in his life. He is a highly intelligent boy with an amazingly good mind for facts and figures. He has a lot of interesting things to say and is capable of some excellent insights. But he is still a kid in a lot of respects; he still is capable of prodigious whining if he doesn't get his way and he sometimes struggles with what one might call the social graces. This will be an interesting year for him, because he still doesn't know that many kids in his class; he went to a different school for the first four years of his education and entered VHES as a 4th grader. He is trying hard to find his place in this environment and in some respects his transition to middle school may be beneficial, since he'll be reunited with his buds from his old school.

Maria is now a first grader and she's coming along well. She read prodigiously over the summer and is now at the point where she pretty much knows how to read, which remains an important part of the 1st grade curricula. She continues to improve in her artistic ability and she remains almost too prolific; if you'd like some artwork, she'll be happy to create it for you, pretty much on the spot. She will likely do better at VHES than her brother, because she came in to the school at the same time as her classmates and has already made some good friends through her early Girl Scout experiences. Context and timing matter a lot to children; it's easy for us to forget that.