Oh what a beautiful morning
Oh what a beautiful day
I’ve got a beautiful feeling
Everything’s going my way!
I wake up singing this in my head every morning these days. It’s been awhile since I really had that feeling, and I’ve missed it. What a bolt of energy this week has been. Things are looking really great for this year, although I’m going to be doing some re-thinking of my palette of commitments and activities in the next couple of weeks as I have to be sure that I have a good balance and don’t take on too much at once like I have the tendency to do.
Choir is an energy kick. We’ve started a ladies barbershop tune tonight, Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend, which promises to be really swingy and fun once we get it down. And a Nat King Cole song, and lots of other new stuff coming, with 2 concerts already lined up.
I can’t seem to sit still and have so much to do, and it’s all fun, it’s all good. Even the weather seems to be lightening with my mood.
We had our first meeting with Martin’s teacher and the new principal at the school about the issues with English lessons. The father of the other little girl in Martin’s class was there as well, although his wife, who is English, couldn’t get out of work. Both the principal and the teacher seem very actively engaged in helping to find a solution and agreed that it was terrible that the county government had been so lazy/irresponsible about providing the mother-tongue tutoring in English that is guaranteed by law. We all felt that if the kids had had that extra help, the problem wouldn’t be nearly so urgent.
So we parents are going to call the county (again) to talk to the man who is the head of the Modersmål Undervisning* department for the county, who has been no help in the past and complain vociferously about the state of affairs. If we get no good answers (again) we’ll put together a letter stating our side of the situation and our displeasure in the system and how things have been handled (or rather not handled) in not providing a hemspråk teacher for 3 years.
The teacher and the principal are going to talk to the 4th and 5th grade teachers to find out about the possibility of having Martin and his classmate join in with their English classes on a regular or semi-regular basis, and administer one of the 5th-grade level English tests to help set their actual level. The teacher has also promised to give them some extra assignments and additional challenges without making them feel put upon.
Hopefully, we can all, including the kids, work together to make sure that they can get the education they need with the peculiar advantages and disadvantages that being bilingual children brings.
In other news, I made a new banner! See? *points up*
*Literally, Mother-tongue Education