Wednesday, September 14, 2016

Update on kindergarten evaluations

It has been a crazy few weeks.
I met with Moose's teacher on September 1, happy birthday to me, to talk about our reasons behind wanting to have him evaluated and possibly moved up to kindergarten.
Unexpectedly, the meeting went great.
She had noticed a few things with him that showed the potential to be ready for moving up.
I set up a date to bring him in to have her start evaluations and we were on our way.
His first day of evaluations went great and his next day was set for the following Wednesday (after a long holiday break from school).
It felt like "hurry up and wait" to get an answer of find out any information for that matter.
I knew his first session has gone well, but not really how well.
And I had no clue on his second session as he had class directly after and parent's aren't allowed in the room when the evaluation is going on.

Yesterday I got to meet with the principal and his teacher to go over the results and see what our options were, if any.
It went better than I could have expected.
I was hoping for the best. To hear them say that he is bright, caring, mature enough, etc to go on to kindergarten and the district approves the switch.
But I was definitely preparing for the worst.
To have them either say that the maturity wasn't there yet (which would be ridiculous compared to his classmates in preschool who were in the age bracket to go straight to kindergarten) or that his is ready for kindergarten, but the district denied the move.
I knew what my moves would be, who I was going to next and that we would end up with either Moose in Kindergarten where he belonged, or back in his preschool with his teacher from last year who would be able to help him continue to grow.
I knew, no matter how nice his Transitional Kindergarten teacher was, he would not be staying in a class where the teacher admits she has nothing left to teach him, just working on a few things like remembering to raise his hand and not interrupting.

So yesterday I was left surprised and thrilled that not only did the fight I had prepared myself for NOT have to take place, but the district offered us three different options to pick from. THREE! 
I went from preparing to fight a district, to having to decide what program would be the best for his future.
In the end, we decided that a Montessori program at his current school would most like benefit him and his personality the best.
Today I get to do a small tour of the classroom and see how it works for a little bit.

To say I am thrilled is an understatement.
I can't wait to get an idea of what he is going to be doing in the near future.

Now is the wait to find out when they are going to move him up to the next level.

I'll update again after today.