rele btufl

So...Dutch's school. It's school. It's public school. Dutch has 20 minutes for lunch (and that includes lining up, walking to the cafeteria, eating, lining up, and walking back to the classroom). She does a lot of worksheets. A LOT. Things seems to be looking up now that there are 20 kids in the classroom instead of 30 (that's a lot of kindergarteners), but they're not going to look up that much.

Dutch's complaints about her teacher so far are 1) she's the only kindergarten teacher who does not give candy to the kids as a reward for good behavior and 2) she won't assign any homework until after winter break. I told Dutch that I have no sympathy whatsoever on these complaints.

I don't know. It's not bad, and there are many, many schools that are much worse. But it's not so great, either. I'd kind of prefer that they just let the kids run around all day if they're not really going to teach them anything - currently poor Dutch isn't getting any playtime or really learning much. It's the worst of both worlds. I'd homeschool/unschool her, except that I'd go absolutely nuts, and it would probably permanently destroy our relationship. Last week I told her that she HAD to stop talking to me for a few minutes, that she wasn't doing anything wrong, but I just COULD NOT TAKE IT ANY MORE. She said cheerfully "Well, mom, I'm just a talkaroony!"

She's also a serious nerd in training.* Or maybe a popular girl in training, or a bully.** I'm not sure. She gets tapped to walk other kids to the office or the bathroom, and do other Teacher's-Pet-type jobs. She begs me to give her homework assignments. She complains about how poorly-behaved and inattentive the other kids are.

It's pretty amazing watching her learn, though, school or no school. Learning to read and write is really hard, and kind of like magic. Today I finally gave her a homework assignment to write a report on the ballet show she had attended with Cook, and this is what she wrote: "the shoe was cool I rele liket sleping beude wen she fell a slep" and "sleping beude was btufl"

*Dutch lives to be called on, by the way. When I say "How was your day?" she reports how many times she got called on that day - fewer than three means a bad day, and more than five means a good day.

**The other day she reported that she was very tired, because it's hard work making up all the games for the whole class at recess, and organizing everything.