Back to School!

Tonight I went to Back to School Night (otherwise known as BTSN) with my 7th grader, and it was fun! He's starting at a new school - the neighborhood school. It's a beautiful, recently built facility. The staff all seemed so....happy. We've spent about a million years at another school (a fantastic charter school in a really really old building, with almost no budget and many great teachers but a few surly ones too). In fact, I've been driving children to said charter school since 1995, if you can believe that. My daughter just started 10th grade there, so we still like the school, it's just time to try out the new neighborhood school!

Tangent: During the BTSN speeches, I started having unpleasant flashbacks to my own teaching experience. I spent one semester teaching high school math, 5 years ago, it was wretched and we'll never speak of it again. (Okay, maybe we will, because it would have been a GREAT time of my life to blog. I even took notes based on the premise that I might write a book someday. Not kidding.)

Back to the subject at hand...my 7th grader is totally excited about starting a new grade at a new school. He's in band class with the most fabulous teacher (and he looks like a mini version of her husband, so much so that she showed me a picture! Freaky! I told her we'll send him to HER house when we get tired of him.)

He's excited about meeting new friends. I've gotten a complete review each day of who he met, how he felt walking to school, what they ate for lunch, and how much he loves the new adventure. He's sitting at the dining room table with me doing his Algebra homework aloud. He just said "this is really helpful, thank you." We're adding positive numbers and negative numbers, and he's loving it.

Did you hear that? He loves the new adventure! I think he just might be my kid. I'll have to tell the band teacher.

Endnote: People, this is SO much better than my formal teaching experience. I get to drink champagne while I teach. Score!