Tuesday, November 6, 2012

Making a change...

I've written a lot about our troubles and frustrations with Mairead since she has started school. We've tried troubleshooting and trying to get in contact with Mairead's teacher, but things just weren't getting any better, and in actuality, they were getting worse.

We were watching our little girl, who absolutely loves to learn, stop loving to learn. Slowly withdrawing, giving us troubles about reading, not wanting to practice spelling words and asking daily to stay home. So very frustrating. As I had written before, Mairead was actually starting to have separation anxiety from us, which is a pretty significant personality change for her.

Since Kevin was home for the week last week we were able to meet with her teacher and with the principal of the elementary school, which is K-2. Both were very surprised to hear of our continued troubles, and claimed Mairead was very happy and appeared well adjusted while in school - but at home, it is a completely different story.

We told them we were close to pulling her out of school if things didn't improve, so thankfully they were willing to work with us, and thankfully Maine has pretty great homeschooling laws. Maireads teacher and principal said Mairead could try going to school half days, so she will get her specials (art, music, PE, etc), math, spelling, lunch and recess, then she will come home. We will work on science, social studies and math (which she is having a little trouble with???) at home. Mairead at first was not happy because she would miss her 2nd recess, but I think she will like her new schedule.

I am very happy to try this out and see what happens. I only hope this will lead to Mairead loving school, and loving and being excited to learn again...no matter where that is.