I got a phone call today from Mrs Webb, the second grade teacher that was to have Ethan in her class. I couldn’t imagine why she would be calling me personally before school starts, but she had some news of an exciting opportunity for Ethan. The principal, Mr Conley, had decided to hire two more teachers, one of which was to teach a second and third grade combined class. And they had a meeting with the kids first grade teachers from last year, to pick which kids would be good candidates for the 2nd graders in this class. Ethan was chosen, and they were calling me to see if this is something that we would want him to be a part of. I spoke to Ethan about it for a moment and he said that he’d like to do it. So I told her that he’s fine with being in the class, and I asked if this would mean that if Ethan gets bored with the second grade work would the teacher just give him some third grade work to stretch him? She wasn’t sure, since she has never taught a combined grades class before, but she said she was sure some intermixing of the grade work would end up happening, considering there would be second graders and third graders in the class at the same time. It’s not like the teacher can teach something third grade level and have the second graders NOT hear it….
I’m excited about it though, because Ethan was quite bored with first grade work. His poor teacher was at her wits end trying to figure out how to make it fun for him, but really I think it was just too easy and therefore, he saw no point in doing the work. At one of our parent/teacher conferences, Mrs Peterson was telling us about a math assignment she handed out for the kids to do during class. Ethan sat there for literally half an hour and only got the first line done. She had to keep him from going to music time to finish his assignment, and he still just sat there. Until, she went out into the hallway to sharpen a pencil. She wasn’t gone more than a minute, two minutes TOPS and in the time that she was gone Ethan had finished the assignment. And it’s not like he just slapped some numbers on the page to call it done either, the answers were all RIGHT! So I really think the work was boring to him because it wasn’t a challenge at all.
My only real concern with this class is, if second grade work comes easy to him and he gets bored and spends the majority of the year doing third grade work, would he be in third grade next year? Or would they allow him to skip to fourth? I really don’t want him to end up doing a lot of third grade work this year, then be stuck doing it again next year….we’d then end up with the same problem we had last year with him being completely bored…. So that’s something that Kyle and I will have to talk to his new teacher about.
After I got off the phone with Mrs Webb, Ethan suddenly cried to me that he had changed his mind. And now he is really upset about the upcoming change in his class. Ethan has been one that has never liked change. I’m glad this change happened now, and not AFTER school had started, because he has the next 4 days to warm up to the idea! He keeps telling me that he doesn’t want to do it. Is it bad that I’m more excited than he is????
I’m SURE that he will warm up to the idea and that it will be good for him. I’m so excited that he will be pushed and stretched this year, after all you just can’t learn if it’s too easy. 😉