School Daze

Last night was "Meet Your Teacher" night at Nick's new school. For an hour the parents stood around watching as their kids destroyed a classroom, turning it from Very Neat into Disaster Area. He loved it.

There are thirteen kids in Nick's class. Because not all the kids are there on all the days, the most they will ever have are eight children at one time. Of the thirteen children, nine of them are boys. Three are girls. And one is named Riley and wasn't there last night, but either way my point is SO MANY BOYS. The youngest child is fifteen months, and his name is Finnean. I worked out that he was closer in age to Nate than Nick.

The teacher is Alyssa, a young woman who just moved up from teaching first grade in Mass. She and her husband and their year-old daughter now live one town over. I'm worried because teaching a bunch of two year olds is VERY different from teaching first grade. Lucky for us, there is an assistant, Drenda. (That is not a type. Her name is Drenda, not Brenda.) Drenda has apparently had 18 years experience working with preschoolers. She also has two teenage sons.

Last night I looked around and was questioning my decision. Did I pick the right place? Is he really going to learn anything there? It's hard to see your child with a bunch of other children and think that, to the teacher, he is one of many, when to me, he is one of one. But then, as I read him a bedtime story last night, I realized that it didn't matter. He will learn how to get along with other children. He will play. He will hear new things and go new places. And at home I will keep on taking him to the library and reading him books and singing him the songs that I know. He isn't loosing me as a parent just because he's in school two days a week.