Liam approves of his cool new school.School
So, enough about horses for a bit. How about something a bit more light hearted? I picked up our son Liam today from his second day of Kindergarten and, quite honestly, felt like I deserved a bottle of champagne and a standing ovation for getting this far in his adorable little life of five years.
We only have one son, one heir, no spare, and I would be very surprised if that ever changes despite the heavy campaigning Liam is doing for a brother. The other day I had a bit of a stomach ache and as I writhed in pain for a short while Liam’s eyes lit up like Christmas morning and he diagnosed me with a possible baby growing in my stomach.
I have tried quite hard to do this parenting thing right and part of that has entailed the arduous task of locating the correct school for him, as although he went to a wonderful pre-school, they, unfortunately, did not go further than that. Sadly, due to our traveling schedule, the public school system was out of the question, so off I went to tour private schools, which was very sad, as clearly the public schools had a much better monthly direct debit from our account.
The first one I toured was a pretty famous global brand name, so I felt surely that had to be a good place to start. Leslie and I both toured the Kindergarten class and as we watched the kids working by themselves, very well behaved, on various education games we noticed a little boy right at our feet who had a bunch of numbered cards that clearly he was supposed to line up in order, but instead he had them backwards and upside down and yet the teacher who was milling around monitoring it never stopped to help him. The boy put the cards away neatly clearly considering himself done with that activity. The principal was standing right next to us, so I turned to her and asked why the teacher did not help and correct the boy in his work. She looked at us and I kid you not, said, “We do not like to be hasty here in correcting the children. We do not want to risk damaging their young confidence by telling them they are doing things wrong. We like to reward them for their effort in doing and I am sure the teacher will work with the group more on those numbers later”. That was it for us. Leslie had to about kick me in the leg as I’m sure he noticed the total look of disbelief on my face and was worried about the words that might have followed. I’m sorry, but I am not paying you all a gazillion dollars to pad my son’s ego and teach him nothing other than the fact that you are rewarded just for trying even if you do it completely wrong. I basically told the principal that my son’s room was not big enough for all of the ribbons and participation trophies that their school was going to furnish him with and we walked out.
The second school I investigated was a Christian school that is very popular in our area. Leslie and I would not be practicing Christians in any real sense, but I did attend a well-known private school in Toronto that had a religious affiliation, prayers in the morning, Christmas hymns in a church, yatta yatta so I was not against that idea. The first thing that happened when I called the school to ask about admission was that they sent me this massive 40 page document that I had to read and sign and then send in with a check for $100 just to be considered for an interview. I read the document, all 40 pages, and I was ok with it all until page 35, which stated a few conditions of admission. No drinking allowed (clearly I am hoping this document was made for all ages of admissions not just five year olds lol), no drugs, no swearing, yup yup all very good things I can agree with…and then BANG! right there in black and white, I almost fell off my chair, read, and if you are a child of a same sex couple you are not welcome here. WOWZA. Now, I know there are all kinds of opinions on that matter, but boy, to read that, so boldly and matter of factly stated, was kind of a big shocker to me. Leslie and I have many close gay friends and I must admit I just about vomited a little bit in my mouth reading that. I sat and thought for a long time and then came to the idea that perhaps, as it was a private Christian school, no doubt driven by a board of perhaps older religious persons, that perhaps this was just some kind of mandatory hyperbole they had to put in their paperwork to make everyone happy. I mean truthfully, I was probably one of very few people that actually read all this anyways. So I decided to sign the papers and go further with investigating the school.
A month later I got invited to come tour the school. The tour was given to me by a very nice lady whose daughter went to the school and in chatting she happened to tell me her husband was a pharmacist. The school was beautiful with very nice grounds, amazing sports fields and arenas, and lovely buildings. As I got led around I got more and more excited that although I must admit Ocala is a bit culturally retarded on many levels compared to the city I grew up in, here was a school fit for my son.
The children seemed happy and well behaved, the Kindergarten kids were already learning to write in cursive (not that I really think that matters anymore I appreciate the attempt lol) and I knew Leslie would approve of their massive soccer field. At the end of my tour I only had one question. Where was the religion? For a school that touts itself on its Christian affiliation, and in fact has a large affiliated church parked right beside it, my tour guide had mysteriously left any mention of that out. So I asked…Where’s the religion come in? She looked at me and told me that they would say prayers every morning and then on the second week of every month they would all walk over to the church for a service. I was like, Perfect! Sounds great to me! o I turned to her again and asked, “So that is the only religious aspect here?” She then started oddly gazing at the ground and doing something funny with her right foot in the sand until she mumbled “Well, the school only interacts with other strictly Christian schools, no interactions with other religions and it also kind of comes into play with their science and history lessons as well”. Oh gosh. I could feel my face making the same expressions that they made in the aforementioned school. “And how exactly does religion come into history and science?” I asked. I had my suspicions about what she was talking about vis-à-vis science, however, I couldn’t imagine how history could have a religious slant. She then led me into the grade 4 homeroom and showed me text books whose titles were abbreviated with ‘from a Christian Perspective’. I opened the pages up and almost fell straight over. I know I live in the South and I am still accepting that, but come on! I couldn’t believe some of the things I read. I looked at my tour guide and asked her what her pharmacist husband thought of these science text books and her response was that she and her husband made a point of talking to their daughter about how their opinions could differ from that which her school taught. I told her that my husband and I were too tired at the end of the day to teach our son that all he sees has actually changed throughout the ages and not just been like that since the beginning of time, and on top of that we didn’t have the energy to unteach any homophobia or religious narrow-mindedness. I added that if anyone was going to preach hatred and intolerance to our son it would be his parents thank you very much. And would probably come in the form against chestnut mares, French Horses’ mouths and insurance companies. That was the end of that school… which was too bad as like I said, they had one hell of a soccer pitch.
I finally got lucky at school number 3. A small private S.T.E.M school, which stands for Science Technology Engineering and Math, in case you were oblivious to these new schools as I was. It focuses on those aspects of schooling above all else under the belief that those are the careers of the future, I suppose. They also have some gym and music sprinkled into the curriculum, but certainly the focus is on technology, as in grade 4 they are required to have their own laptops and start robotics classes and by grade 5 they are working on CAD, which I find hysterical as I learnt that when I was 20 and found it quite daunting. During grade 8, the school helps you and your child identify if the student is so inclined to these subjects and helps you funnel them into a STEM high school or will help you get them into one of the more arts inclined schools if they are showing that inclination instead. There are no sports teams which is a pity, however, we already have Liam in a soccer league and swim lessons and, of course, there is the dragon slaying he does on his pony currently known as ‘Soldier’ so I suppose doing sports at school outside of regular gym class is not really mandatory.
When we went for orientation there I just knew we had made the right decision as you got a great feel from the staff, a very detailed and intelligent curriculum handed to us, and most importantly of all, Liam was grinning ear to ear after his interview day there. Apparently they have very cool monkey bars and so much little Legos that you are not allowed to dump the box so it passed his highest standards. He did tell me, however, that he met his Spanish teacher and told her that he didn’t understand why he had to speak Spanish (which he knows BTW, as his nanny was strictly Spanish speaking) because ‘he was American and he spoke English’. Alas… Clearly he is voting for Trump, our Liam lol.
I have only encountered two troublesome aspects with the school thus far, but am confident I can learn to adapt.
- CAR LINE. What??????? I think this is an American thing as I certainly never heard of it in Canada, but it seems very common here. Every morning each class has a 20 min window in which to drop off your kid. You have a sticker in your window that states your kid’s name and grade and then as you pull up to the front door of the school the teachers swoop in, take your kid out of their seat and bustle them off. You can only imagine the organized chaos of it all. It is like transporting masses of tiny prisoners. I suppose there is a safety reason for it and it is probably a good thing, but it confused the hell out of me at first, makes me very twitchy about getting there in my allotted time period and then, of course, you have one moment like today when Leslie went off to the airport in the car for a clinic and then all of a sudden you are in this car line up with your massive Ford and gosh darn it no flipping sticker.
- THE ‘STUFF’. The school requires a lot of daily ‘stuff’, which is quite tricky for me to remember. Of course, there is a lunchbox, and a snack, but on top of that they require a book bag with a ‘Parent Folder’ in it (for shuffling letters back and forth) and then lastly, a plastic water bottle every day. The water bottle is a big deal I guess. I don’t get it really. We had water fountains in school if we were dying of thirst. I suppose it is all relative to where you live. In Toronto, I suppose my mom’s big pain in the butt was the fact that we had to wear galoshes over our oxfords to school in the winter to avoid dragging mud, salt and snow in. That was mandatory, and I guess if we were going to do anything outside it was die of hypothermia on the playground. So I suppose in Florida in the summer, water is their galoshes. But, of course, this morning as I drove up in my too large truck, without my sticker, and the teacher came to fish him out, Liam panicked and squealed ‘Where’s my water bottle?!’ The teacher stared at me, Liam stared at me, and all I could say was that it was on the top shelf of our fridge with perfectly chilled and filtered water in it. I am going to find a way to tie that bloody thing to the lunchbox somehow.
Like I said, I am sure I will adapt to those items soon, but at least the school hasn’t asked me whether my husband is a man or a woman yet and seeing as Liam has reported that two of his ‘new friends’ names’ are Elijah and Shlock I feel fairly confident that he will be exposed to multiple cultures and religions.
