I See You

I've arrived at my son's kindergarten classroom bright and early, because I've volunteered to chaperone a field trip. When I enter the room, I see the class standing on the colored rug in the front of the room, dancing to a song about the letter I.  There is some choreography involved, and most of the children are mindlessly trying to imitate it--but not my son. Gus is front and center, and he's busting a move. The music is some kind of pseudo-rap, and Gus has happy feet. 

Later, when the dance is finished, the teacher sits the kids down to talk about the field trip. The class is going to a research facility run by the local university's department of aquatics and fisheries. They are going to tour the facility and then go fishing in the stock ponds. The teacher asks the kids what they might see during the dip-netting portion of the field trip (when the kids will get the opportunity to fish for critters in slimy little ponds).

Gus's hand is the first one in the air. I get the feeling that his hand is always the first one in the air. He Knows Stuff. The class conversation moves to the kinds of animals one might find in the bottom of a slimy little pond: frogs, tadpoles, minnows, insects, and possibly crayfish. The teacher stresses that crayfish are NOT lobsters, and that they are in fact smaller than lobsters. And delicious. (Just kidding, she didn't tell them that. I did.)

Gus raises his hand again. "Mrs. M, that goes back to our math, because crayfish are smaller than lobsters, and that's a measurement." On the way to the field trip, the daily classrom volunteer asked me if I was Gus's mom. "He's so funny," she said, "and very smart. He uses such very big words, and he's always so solemn." She asked me if Gus's school has gifted classes, because "he's going to need more."

You're preaching to the choir, I think, but thank her for noticing my son.

It's strange, really, that he goes to school. For three years he was with me every day, and then, just like that, I sent him to school. And I don't know what he does there. I mean, they gave me a schedule, but that doesn't explain the daily minutiae. The schedule does not tell me how much Gus knows or whether or not he'll be in the highest reading group (he is). It does not give me visual reference for where he sits or how he acts when the teacher is talking.

I think going in for this field trip was a good thing.

Comments

[Kelly]

I am 90-99% positive (depending on the day) that I am going to homeschool, but I worry sometimes that my motive is primarily to avoid being left out.

If I send my daughter to school, I will surely be that busybody parent that all the teacher's complain about.