- This teacher let it "slip" that she was not a fan of homeschooling.
- This teacher made her opinion quite obvious that Amelia was "not ready for second grade".
- This teacher implied that Amelia's inability to stay in her seat or stay on task was directly related to homeschooling the previous year.
Amelia's behavior continued to decline, slowly at first but it picked up speed toward the end of the year. At one point, she received something that our school calls an "N.O.C." or "notice of concern". The incident involved an outburst of anger where she slammed her books and her desk chair. I had begun to notice that she was becoming more impulsive with her actions when she was frustrated. Although she was not violent, she definitely was losing grip with self control. I suspected that while Amelia was losing self control, her teacher was losing patience.
Her grades remained stable, with the exception of reading comprehension and math computation. There were some negative remarks on her report card but they mostly had to do with her attitude. Her final report card was good, as far as I was concerned. She passed to the third grade and I was thankful. They did mention that she needed to work on reading and math over the summer. The resource teacher provided a packet of worksheets for her to work on. Dan's sister is a kindergarten teacher in the public school system. Since our kids usually spent most of their summers with her, she agreed to work with Amelia on her reading skills and to help her complete the summer work that the school assigned.
That summer went well. Her aunt worked with her ALL SUMMER LONG and by the time school started, Amelia's reading level was exactly where it needed to be for beginning third grade. Her first quarter grades were terrific..all A's and B's. However, it wasn't long before her behavior began to take a dive...again. When the third grade teacher worked with her one on one, she did fine, but again, she was struggling within the classroom setting. She couldn't sit still. She fidgeted with anything and everything. The teacher tried moving her all over the classroom in hopes of finding her a "spot" that worked. She was becoming more and more of a distraction for the other students.
Tune in tomorrow for When a child is hurting, Part 3!
You can read Part 1 by clicking here!
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