Dear Joey-Bear~
Life is good for you right now. You are doing so well in your piano class. You teach Mommy everything you learn, so maybe someday Mommy will be able to play piano too. But you are already way better than me.
The weather is finally cooling off so you're enjoying a little freedom outside at the park, zooming up and down the hills on your scooter.
I'd say your only challenge right now is the Accelerated Reader (AR) program at school. You read these books, at a pre-determined level, then you sign up to take a computer quiz that checks your comprehension, then you take the quiz, then you sign up to go to the library, then you go to return your 2 books and get 2 new ones. Then the process starts all over again.
Well, see here at home, you read 100 page long chapter books for fun. And your score on the quizes are 100%. So I really didn't care very much that your amount of books read was less than the class average. I knew you are an amazing reader and I wasn't worried.
Turns out that there's a big bulletin board in your classroom on which everyone has a rocketship. It moves towards a goal determined by the amount of books you've read and tested on. And you were in last place, week after week. And I had no idea. I am so sorry.
So now, we agreed as a family to help you catch up and stay caught up. So, we go early to school everyday to take the quiz in the computer lab, then we go to the library to check out new books. Then at home we constantly checking in, reading more, determining where in the process you are and what the next step is.
I think about how you are my first and you are my "learning child". By the time Marcus gets to the same place, I'll have all this figure out. But with you, well we are always going to be learning together.
And I have a feeling that more often than not, you are going to be teaching me. Lucky for me, you are a really good kid.
Jonah, I love you.
Life is good for you right now. You are doing so well in your piano class. You teach Mommy everything you learn, so maybe someday Mommy will be able to play piano too. But you are already way better than me.
The weather is finally cooling off so you're enjoying a little freedom outside at the park, zooming up and down the hills on your scooter.
I'd say your only challenge right now is the Accelerated Reader (AR) program at school. You read these books, at a pre-determined level, then you sign up to take a computer quiz that checks your comprehension, then you take the quiz, then you sign up to go to the library, then you go to return your 2 books and get 2 new ones. Then the process starts all over again.
Well, see here at home, you read 100 page long chapter books for fun. And your score on the quizes are 100%. So I really didn't care very much that your amount of books read was less than the class average. I knew you are an amazing reader and I wasn't worried.
Turns out that there's a big bulletin board in your classroom on which everyone has a rocketship. It moves towards a goal determined by the amount of books you've read and tested on. And you were in last place, week after week. And I had no idea. I am so sorry.
So now, we agreed as a family to help you catch up and stay caught up. So, we go early to school everyday to take the quiz in the computer lab, then we go to the library to check out new books. Then at home we constantly checking in, reading more, determining where in the process you are and what the next step is.
I think about how you are my first and you are my "learning child". By the time Marcus gets to the same place, I'll have all this figure out. But with you, well we are always going to be learning together.
And I have a feeling that more often than not, you are going to be teaching me. Lucky for me, you are a really good kid.
Jonah, I love you.
(Christmas 2005)
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