Ahhh…grade school.  The memories come flooding back, every time I get a call from one of my kids’ teachers.  Our oldest child (Adventure Boy) is in sixth grade this year, and seems to be doing great.

     Our youngest (Bunny Boy) is in second, and we have been getting weekly calls from the teacher about classroom behavior.

     The teacher reports being “disturbed” by his classroom behavior…that is to say, humming, playing with his hands, forgetting what he’s supposed to be doing, and drifting “off task”…

     Same old same old.  Same as when Adventure Boy was in second grade, and same as when I was in second grade, and same as when my husband was in second grade…

     Does anyone know anyone who didn’t do these things in second grade?  Since when is this “disturbing behavior?”  Seriously.

     To me, “disturbing” behavior is like…I don’t know…compulsive biting, or spitting, or mutilating animals…all of which were behaviors I witnessed in my second grade class. (No, nobody mutilated an animal in the classroom.  It was actually on the playground.  A group of boys discovered a mouse running along the wall of the building, and stomped it to death.  They were vastly amused by the fact that its guts were squished out.  The story was re-told for weeks.)

     Second grade was when I got stabbed in the hand with a pencil in a despute with a fellow classmate.  The pencil lead broke off in my hand, and the nurse sent me back to class with a blood-soaked bandage over it.  As far as I know, the kid was never disciplined.  I still have the lump of pencil embedded in my hand...that's distrubing.

     There was a girl in my fifth grade class who wouldn’t go anywhere without her Kermit the Frog doll, and once she used it to demonstrate to a group of us kids on the play ground how “french-kissing” works.  That, I found really disturbing.

     I know I’m weird, but it doesn’t seem “disturbing” to me when a seven-year-old hums to himself without realizing that he’s doing it. (unless there are words like “they'll all pay, oh yes, I'll make them pay“...but I imagine the teacher would have mentioned this if it were the case.)

     Granted, if all of the kids are trying to work quietly, I will go along with it being characterized as “annoying”, or “disruptive”, or “unacceptable”.  I’d even agree to calling it “inappropriate”…but “disturbing”?  Nah.  Not buying it.

     In the kids Kung Fu class, I see a wide range of behaviors.  Bunny Boy is admittedly one of the most squirrelly kids in the class, but he isn’t exactly in a class by himself.  There are a few kids who are at least as drifty and unfocused.

     More rare yet are the ones who pay attention all the time.  I like those kids a lot.  They’re easy to teach.  If I could have a whole group made up of just those kids, boy would that be great.

     If I could have a group without the girl who asks for a water break every 30 seconds, or the three kids (including Bunny Boy) who repeatedly fall to the ground on purpose because they’re bored, or the kid who races ahead in the form we’re practicing and confuses the kids who don’t know it as well yet, or the girl who likes to do the kicks real hard and make her shoe fly off her foot, or the boy who makes bad Kung Fu movie sound effects every time he kicks or punches, or the kid who ALWAYS gets his hands and feet mixed up and punches or kicks with the left instead of the right…

     Now granted, I usually only have to work with three to five at a time, but I deal with it.

     If I had thirty kids in my classroom, I’d want to send all the difficult ones off to other teachers as well.

     And that’s what this comes down to.  The teacher wants to put Bunny Boy in a special classroom called “The reading room” for 90 minutes every day.  Don’t ask me what he’ll be missing during those 90 minutes.  I intend to find out when we talk again on Friday.

     Anyway, he also wants him in the before school math supplement program.  OK, fine.  Sounds good to me.  I practice reading and math with Bunny Boy before school every day anyway.  That’s two days a week when I won’t need to do it.  No problem.

     The teacher says that his basic skills aren’t up to grade level.  In particular, his reading skills are at level “4”, or “C”, and they are supposed to be at level “15” or “L”.  I have no idea what that means.

     I read with him every morning before school.  We read the books he brings home from the school library, and he seems to do just fine with them.  Sure, he misses a word once in a while, but I really think he’s doing fine.  He’s certainly doing better than Adventure Boy was doing in second grade, but then again, they had him in a special reading group as well.

     When I sent Adventure Boy off to kindergarten, he knew all of his letter names and sounds.  When they assessed him, they said he knew seven letter names, and five sounds.  They put him in the remedial group, and he stayed there for four years.

     In fourth grade, his teacher assessed his reading level at first grade.  In that remedial group, there was another boy who is generally recognized as a spectacular athlete.  He is very competitive.  Adventure Boy was many, many times the reader this kid was.  The athletic kid began to bully Adventure Boy, while at the same time, other kids made disparaging comments about him being in the special program.

     The fifth grade teacher, however, a mere few months later, assessed his reading level at an eighth grade reading level.  He reads an hour to and hour and a half before bed every night.

     So you can see why I have very little faith in the school district’s assurances that Bunny Boy has academic difficulties, that a pull-out program is the solution to those difficulties, and that getting him up to speed now will save him frustration, stigma and humiliation down the line.

     I don’t happen to believe that he is behind expectations for your average second grader.  Perhaps in a school district like this where we have to have a couple dozen valedictorians every year he is below average…but I hardly think it’s a tragedy in second grade...and I hardly think that we need to get our undies over-much in a bunch about any of this.