problems at school

I knew Jeremiah was going to be a handful at school, so the first few "red" marks he came home with were not all that much of a shock.

We were upset, but not surprised.

It was things like not listening, not following directions- yup, typical Jeremiah stuff.

Then it became spitting, hitting, sticking erasers in other kids ears and cutting another kids shirt!

Now we have issues with him!


But the straw that broke the camels back was on Wednesday. I got a call at work and Alex got a few calls (no messages) while he was exercising on his lunch brake. When we called back no one could find the teacher and didn't know why she had called. When she finally called back she told us that Jeremiah had crawled under the computer table and would not come out! She was hoping we could coax him out, but ended up getting the principal!

So Alex set up a meeting for Thursday, and I already had scheduled Thursday morning to come help out the class.

I was not prepared for the kayos in the class at all. I felt bad for the teacher at first....she had 14 boys and 6 girls! But then I began to see that she really didn't have a grip on the class at all. I saw that Jeremiah's acting out (like playing instead of sitting and reading after he had finished his work, or climbing under the table, or playing with other students) was because he was board!
And in his little 5 yr old mind it's impossible for him to look at picture books when 6 other boys are doing whatever they want around the room...so he joins them! And when called to come back to circle time, or focus on work, he ignores his teacher because she doesn't make him listen.

I also observed the other 4 kindergarten teachers, the seemed to have one or two rowdy boys- but they had a good grip on the class. Even if they still were doing the typical children behaviors of touching others while standing in line, they were not being disruptive about it. But when Jeremiahs class was in the hall other teachers had to assist the class or just kept peeking out their doors at his class.

So Alex and I requested that he get moved to a different class. And, as to be expected, they said all the other classes were too full. Then the grilled us on how we discipline Jeremiah at home and kept telling us that we needed to explain to him that he needed to follow directions no matter what the class was doing! As if to tell us how to be parents! Seriously!

WE are not the ones that are having trouble getting him to listen to US!

So the teacher is going to try splitting his day into 4 parts, and give him stickers for good behavior. My prognosis is that he really wont care about the silly stickers!

Otherwise our only option, to move him out of her class, is to drive him to another elementary school in the district that has a kindergarten opening....