Now that we are a couple of months into the school year and have had our first grading period, I thought it was time to update you guys on what's going on. When I last left you, the classes had just been divided into two and they were waiting to hire a new teacher for the second class.
They have since hired a new teacher, although I don't know anything about her. But John seems to have settled in quite nicely with his original teacher. We had his ARD a couple of weeks ago, and a lot of good things were said and discussed. I feel like we have a good plan in place and hopefully I will start to see lots of good things over the next few months.
Now you all know how much I didn't want John to change schools. I was really upset about it and had my doubts. Especially after the first couple of weeks, I still had my doubts. But I kept saying that I was praying that God had great things in store for John.
Guess what. It turns out that just maybe, I was the person God was trying to change through this. Maybe it's me that he has big plans for. I had an experience today, that I'll tell you about in a minute, that has led me to this conclusion. I am not a natural born leader. I do not have the "take charge" instinct that some people, like my husband, has. I would rather sit back and let someone else lead, and then just do what I'm asked to do. I'm really good at taking instructions and going with it, although my mother would probably disagree. But that is just my personality. However, thinking back on the events of the last several months I've realized a few things.
When I was told that he was being rezoned to a new school, that just awakened something in me that I didn't know existed. I am not a confrontational person at all, and because of that I tend to let people get their way and kind of take advantage of me. Well not this time. I took the situation head on from the beginning, and really was fairly calm about it. But that was only the beginning. After the school year started and I felt things weren't going quite the way they should be, I didn't just sit back and let it happen like I might have in the past. I first emailed the principal, and when I didn't get the response I liked, I contacted someone at the district. None of that is typical of me. But we all know that moms will do a lot when it comes to taking care of their kids.
And what did being so vocal about it get me? I guess since the teachers and school knew that I was very involved in my child's education, they thought I would be the perfect parent to be in charge of starting a Special Buddies program at our school. Being a new school, I didn't know if or when we would be able to start the program. But once our counselor got wind of it and began asking around, I was the person who was recommended to do so. This goes back to not being a leader. I don't normally like to be in charge of things. I will help out with whatever I'm asked to, but I don't like to organize and be in charge. Which brings me to what happened today.
I agreed to be the parent liason for the Special Buddies at the school and Mrs. Leung (the counselor) and I set a date and chose an activity for our first event. But there were still a few things I was unsure about. So today I went to meet with Mrs. Leung to ask some questions and get a better idea of what to expect. We had a great meetings and I got a lot of questions answered. We discussed what we wanted to do at our first event and how we wanted to put it together. And then I started to feel excited. This was kind of unexpected. I had been feeling dread and anxiety over having to come up with something fun for the kids. I'm not a creative person so it is hard for me to come up with good ideas. But as we were talking this morning and things were starting to come together, I actually started to get excited about it. It makes me happy when John gets to interact with regular ed kids. It's so important to me that not only does he get that interaction, but that the other kids get to interact with him. I want kids to learn that not everyone is the same, but that they all matter just as much. Hopefully if we can train our kids to think this way, we can get a handle on this bullying problem that is out there.
And if coordinating Special Buddies isn't enough, I volunteered to help start a Young Athlete's program at his school. This is sort of an extension of the Special Olympics program and John got to take part in it last year at OKE. It was a very fun day for the kids and parents, and then after, they had a parade around the school for the participants where all of the students and staff in the school lined the halls and cheered for our kids as they walked by. That was my favorite part and made me want to get this started at Shafer as well. We are probably going to wait until next school year to implement this program, but Mrs. Leung said she is going to go to OKE's program this year to get a good idea of how it works. I told her I would go with her and help her bring the program to our school.
This morning was the first time that I really felt happy about him being in school at Shafer Elementary. I finally feel my heart begin to heal, because it truly was broken when he had to change schools. I finally see that maybe God put us in this situation not for John's sake, but for mine. He has forced me to come out of my comfort zone, and as a result, I feel like I'm growing as a person. I don't think this means I'm going to seek out a leadership role or automatically become better at confrontation, but at least now I know that I have it in me if I need it. I think he still has great things planned for John, but I have discovered that he still has great things planned for me. And I am very hankful for him teaching me this. It turns out, all I needed was a little push, and my heart just needed a little time.
