Wait. What Did He Just Say?

Today Braedyn met his Kindergarten teacher, an absolutely lovely woman I feel is going to do a stellar job with my son. As part of the Kindergarten curriculum, the teacher spends the first week of school meeting with each child on an individual basis for one half-hour. During our time, she showed him where his cubby was and provided some general information about the upcoming school year. Then I waited out in the hallway as she ran through a series of basic questions with him in order to get a feel for where he was with various concepts (ie, numbers, letters, shapes, counting). After assessing each student, she has a better idea of how to teach all these new students as an entity.

During his assessment, I peaked in a couple of times to listen to what he was being asked and to see how he was responding. Bad idea.

Let me clarify that statement. He did AWESOME during his assessment. He wasn’t nervous and he answered what questions he could and said he “didn’t know” on the things he was unsure of. I wasn’t expecting him to know all the answers, especially given my view on pre-school academia. Feeling it was a bad idea came when I overheard things like:

Teacher: Can you count these blocks for me? (Pointing to a board with 3 rows of 10 blocks each.)

Braedyn: 1…2…3…4…5…6…7…8…9…10… <moving to the next row> 1…2…

Teacher: Can you keep counting them without starting at 1 again? Go ahead and try again.

Braedyn: 1…2…3…4…5…6…7…8…9…10… <moving to the next row> 1…

Teacher: What comes after 10?

Braedyn: I don’t know. My mommy always starts over at 1.

Me: <Biting my lip>

or…

Teacher: Please write your name here.

Braedyn: <Writes name>

Teacher: Great! Now please draw a picture of yourself here.

Braedyn: I don’t know how.

Teacher: You don’t know how to draw a picture of yourself?

Braedyn: No. I only know how to draw monsters.

Me: <Hand slapping forehead>

Teacher: You can draw monsters?

Braedyn: Yeah, I can draw angry eyes.

OK, so Braedyn KNOWS how to count past 10. In fact, we count to 30 every time we put on a temporary tattoo. And that would be quite often. Thankyouverymuch. And as far as the monster comment? I can only hope she thinks he was talking about the Sesame Street variety. Ugh.