The teachers at Katherine’s pre-school do something very, very strange.
Home visits.
I.e., before the school year starts, the teacher and her aide (and, in our case, a special ed teacher) actually travel to the home of each pupil and chat with the parents.
This is, actually, both really nifty and extremely self-interested. Nifty because it provides the teacher a chance to see the home environment, do some evaluation of the kid, introduce themselves to the kid on the kid’s own turf, etc.
Self-interested because it’s probably the only chance in hell of their actually meeting some of the parents. Trust me, I’ve been there.
Anyway, they came over yesterday afternoon, as we were finishing vacation prep. I’d gotten the living room cleaned up, so, of course, we ended up in the family room. There was her teacher, Miss Dana, as well as her speech therapist, and Miss Dana’s aide (who kept Katherine busy, and did some eval on her, while the rest of us talked).
Most of the talk was about school rules, and the program, and what they do, and solicitation to volunteer for snacks (which we did, and volunteered for extra snacks if some parents couldn’t/wouldn’t, which was greeted with repeated profound thanks). The speech therapist chatted with us about how we wanted to communicate, and I astonished her with the concept that e-mail would be even better than notes, and certainly better than phone calls.
Filed under “It’s a Small World,” it turns out that the speech therapist used to live, until a few years ago, a couple of houses down the street. Indeed, she once returned one of our cat collars which had been lost in her yard. We chatted a bit about neighbors and houses for sale in the area, etc., and she noted she needed to swing by some friends who she’d promised she’d visit during the summer, but hadn’t.
They were much impressed that we went from the furthest corner (literally) of the school district to the Village. We basked in the adulation.
The teacher mentioned that Katherine might end up picking up some Spanish, since there were some Spanish-speakers in her class. We noted that she enjoyed watching Dora the Explorer, and actually could count up to ten in Spanish. The next thing we knew, we could hear her doing so, and beyond. “She just counted to twelve in Spanish,” the aide announced.
She also impressed them by singing the sign language song she’d learned a couple of days before. With prompting, sure, but better than I could have done it.
“She’s going to be teaching the other kids,” Miss Dana speculated. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least.