Our last days at USchool — ChrissieEric.com

It was a challenging fall for our family, as we were encouraged to leave the school my kids had attended for the last ten years. It was sad for everyone. I had spent all my free time volunteering at school, or trying to help build community among the families there, so my kids whole worlds were wrapped up in that school. We are definitely a mix of angry, anxious and sad, along with some relief at the end of tuition payments and unkind atmosphere in some areas. Still, there are good memories from this fall that we will want to remember, so I will write a post for school anyway.

Maia was definitely thriving in Mrs Wilson’s class (Formerly Ms. Phelps, she went back to her married name when the other Mrs. Wilson went to just being a counselor.) She wrote us Friday letters every week, and even though initially it was an activity that stressed her out, since writing is tough for her, we already treasure all the letters she ended up writing us! And she even said she wants to keep writing letters after she moved to her new school! We’ll see, but it was definitely a cool project!

Flashlight Friday! Another tradition she loves from this class!

Donovan’s class lucked out and got to be in the West Wing! I saw the most of that class since I was there every day to give Donovan insulin. They love being downstairs and definitely took advantage of getting outside as much as possible, during snack breaks and such. Donovan had some cool projects, including researching his favorite animal, creating an imaginary animal, and lots of fun math. He especially loved reading his Newberry book. He even set his alarm and woke up early one morning to read! He usually never hears alarms and definitely doesn’t get up before he has to in the mornings, so this was such fun to see! He giggled as he read the book and said “I love these chapter titles! They’re so descriptive! It’s like Dr. Hamby wrote this book!” She was his science teacher, and he loves her sense of humor. And she loves that he gets her sense of humor ;)

Serenity’s favorite part of school this fall was her tiny Algebra two class. There were only four people in it, and she loves discussing complex math. She even thought this kind of group work was pretty fun, which is definite progress for her! She would tell me all about it on our walks around campus during her scheduled P.E. time.

Since I needed to be at school so often to give Donovan shots and to do P.E. with Serenity, I asked if it was possible for me to stay at school and volunteer during the day, so I didn’t have to spend all day driving back and forth from school or just sit in my car in the parking lot. Since vaccinations were available, I got to go in! I mostly worked in the library every day after Donovan’s shot, and some mornings too. It was SO MUCH FUN!! I learned a lot from our amazing librarian, Mrs. McCollum, and I’m considering adding a Library Media degree after I finish my Reading Specialist degree. I don’t know when I’ll actually have a class but I just love to learn! I got to make some cool bulletin boards for the library, and I started putting out books by theme to encourage kids to try different books. I went through the whole library doing inventory, and I had just started relabeling all the books to put three letters for authors last name to make it easier to organize when we had to leave. I really wish I could have finished that, I LOVE labels ;) I loved finding books I knew my kids would love as I was shelving in the stacks, and I loved helping any kids find books to read. I really should think about that library degree!

I volunteered to run the Book Fair, so that we could actually have an in-person book fair. I stayed at school every day the week of the book fair, which was fun and also tragic when we got encouraged to leave mid-week. So my last day at school, was the last day of the fair. The kids didn’t go to school as they needed a day to be sad, but I needed to finish what I started so I had one last day helping kids with books, and then I moved the decorations I made up to the library I love, said goodbye to many of my long-time teacher friends, and made people cry, including myself, and left. Bittersweet.