First Report Card

We’re new to public schools this year with my daughter in Kindergarten.   She was in the Kindergarten-level class at her school last year but Montessori schools are a bit different in classroom makeup and classifications.

One thing we’ve never had before is a report card.   Our children have been going to a Montessori school since before they were two-years-old.   My son is in Lower Elementary there now as a “first year”.   What this means in non-Montessori terms is he’s in a blended classroom of students in first, second and third grades.   Approximately one-third of the class is at each “grade” or level.  

My son is loving it.   He’s seeing what the children one and two years older are doing.   He’s seeing how well the can read and write and the research projects they get to do like “Mystery History” that happened in his classroom yesterday where the third-years dressed up and talked about who they were as a famous person in history.   The rest of the class and visiting parents got to guess who the student was.    My son is also helped at times by these older students who are able to help solidify their knowledge on a subject by helping someone else.

So my son is loving his class and is very motivated to learn because of the environment he’s immersed in.   We have always had parent/teacher conferences, even when my children were in a Toddler House classroom and didn’t have words to speak yet.   But no report cards.  

Montessori doesn’t give report cards.   We are made aware if there’s a problem where the child isn’t able to progress reasonably given skill and age, but each child’s education moves at their own pace and not at a standard expected by the whole class.  

My daughter is in Kindergarten in public school now.   I like every one of her teachers including her kindergarten teacher, two assistant teachers, Braillest, VI room teacher and O&M teacher.  They’re all kind and caring and my daughter seems to like them all as well.   But what should we expect from progress for the first nine weeks from both my child and this fine team of educators?

It was confusing.  The “here’s what we’re working on now and your child should be able to do XYZ” letters that came home didn’t apply to a blind child in some parts and not at all in other parts.   My daughter also had her own education plan from the county that was being tracked.   Instead of worrying about it I decided to let the experts do their jobs and they’d let us know if we needed to do something.

We did do some homework when needed but other than that, my daughter was in good hands.   Her IEP (Individualized Education Plan) from the county had it’s own report which came back that she was meeting and/or exceeding all the goals set.   Some of the comments were very warming, hearing how my daughter, once she got braille, sort of attacked it with enthusiasm.

She also got the standard report card in which she got Proficient on everything but one thing, attendance—because we went to the solar eclipse.    I think I’ll take the hit on that one for the experience alone.  

The Big Boy Update:   My son was looking at himself in the mirror tonight, looking under his arm and asked me, “mom, do I have any hair under my arms?”

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My son was at a free running class tonight and got in late for bed.   I’d put my daughter to bed already but she didn’t want to go to sleep.   I dropped in on her via the Alexa in her room and told her her brother would be up shortly and to please try to go to sleep.   She said crossly, “but it’s boring up here”.