First Day Drama

Poor Sierra. She was so excited about going to "real" school for her first time today. So excited, in fact, that she was bouncing up and down in her seat at the short assembly before the kids were to go off to their classes. When I left her, after seeing her to her first class, she seemed eager, shy, uncertain, and still excited.

Fast forward seven hours. When I came to pick her up, I had no idea where to find her. Was I supposed to wait for her to come find me, or go find her myself? After a few minutes, I decided to go find her. When I did, she was with Mrs. Gresham, the music/drama/math teacher, who was trying to calm her down. Then Sierra turned around and saw me, threw herself into my arms, and, burying her face, tried to hold back tears.

Mrs. Gresham explained what had happened, and soon Mrs. Ford, her science/writing teacher, came out and explained the rest. They could tell she'd never been to school before and promised to keep special watch on her next week. They were very nice about it really.

Turns out, Sierra had gone to the wrong class, twice. She mixed up her music and PE classes as well as her writing and science classes. It was also a lot longer of a day then she has ever experienced (her longest school day to date being a total of 2 1/2 hours). And to add insult to injury, she got hit in the head twice with a ball. Sierra had had enough. School hadn't turned out at all as perfect as she'd expected.

So, I held Sierra's hand as we walked to the car. She didn't want to talk. In the car, I babbled a bit, then asked her what she did in PE. No response. I asked again.

"We ran around the room," was all she said.

"Anything else?"

"We played with a bean bag."

Her sniffling was easing up, and she was starting to look a little better. Good. "What did you do in art?" I asked.

"I drew a picture."

"What did you draw?"

"I don't know." Her lip started to tremble again. OK, steer away from that subject. (I later found out she'd simply forgotten what she'd drawn).

"Did you make any new friends? It's OK if you don't remember their names."

"Yes."

"Did you have fun?'

No answer.

"Did you eat lunch with all of the kids or just the younger ones?"

"They were all my age," she replied. Then, she finally started offering information. "They have lots of rules at lunch. Don't hit anybody. And I'm glad I didn't bring any peanuts. One kid forgot and had a peanut butter sandwich". There is a family who is VERY allergic to peanuts, so we were asked not to bring any.

"Do you remeber any more?" I asked, trying to keep the conversation going.

"No. They were just mostly about being nice to people." I nodded my head. She continued, "it's OK the first time, but if you do it twice, the call your mom. And if you do it three times, they have to sit with someone".

"Like having a time out", I commented.

"Mm hm. And there was this girl my age who had a little brother. He was mean. He threw the ball at my head on purpose".

"Are you sure it was on purpose. It could have been an accident".

"No. He tried to do it a second time, but he missed".

"I thought you got hit twice," I said.

"Yah. A older boy hit me. It was an accident. He didn't really mean to".

We were getting close to home at this point, so I just reminded her that next week would be much better because she would know what she was doing, and I wasn't going to let her stop going until she'd tried it out for a good couple months at least. She complained that she had never had a hard time in preschool, and I reminded her that yes, she had. On her first day she'd been scared stiff, even though Teacher Wilson is one of the nicest ladies I know. She didn't believe me, so I told her all about her first day of preschool. I think I was able to finally convince her.

When we got home, I pulled out her schedule and room map showing her where she's supposed to go when and for what. That seemed to reassure her. I think she'll be fine next week, and if it doesn't, then maybe the week after that. She'll eventually get the hang of it, and when she does, she'll really start enjoying it.



P.S. For those of you who are not aware, Sierra is going to a publicly funded Options school designed specifically for homeschoolers. They meet once a week and have things like group activities, arts, drama, PE, and so forth. The rest of the week she is still at home with me as her teacher. I like it because it gives her that social aspect of school in smaller doses, gives her the extracurriculars I don't teach, leaves me in charge of her main education, and has small class sizes (there are only about 13 second graders). And because it's through the school district, I don't have to pay for it.