Progress and set backs

Wow, are we seeing progress this week. Alice is doing fantastic. Remember the boundary challenges we had over phone calls and using the computer? Well this week she is setting the kitchen timer herself for calls and computer time. No big deal, right? Well, one day I was still finishing my shower when her telephone time expired. I expected she would still be on the phone when I came out to the living room. Wrong. She had ended her call without supervision and was reading a book out in the sun room. Yea!!!

She is accepting that we don't always say yes to her requests without challenges, pouting, or other negative behaviors. She may ask why, but generally accepts the reasons we give. She has a very upbeat positive attitude. She has a sense of humor and has started playing with us in little ways. A right of spring passage in America is washing the car. She helped me wash the van this week and when I shook a few drops of water on her she promptly pointed the hose at me and threatened a soaking! Thankfully she was happy just to see my reaction to the threat and I didn't get wet. She's outside helping her dad wash his car now and he appears to still be dry!

Language has been coming along, more behind the scenes (inside her head) than outwardly. We are getting very good at communicating with the computer translators, reading for the hidden meaning when the translation comes out strange. Alice and I have had some rather lengthy conversations using the translators. Yesterday though we heard a significant breakthrough. She spoke an entire sentence in English at dinner without looking it up on the translator first. "Brothers, sister not go to school?" to which we responded, "yes." She followed up with, "Why?" A full sentence, 2 weeks to the day she arrived here I think is huge. During the day when it's just the 2 of us, there can be long stretches of silence. Being sick certainly made it worse, but we've all come to depend heavily on the translators and haven't been talking to her as much as we should have just for the sake of exposure. Certainly an area we could have done better, but she has been learning English in spite of our poor parenting.

The reason for the question about school was some conversation we had earlier in the day about schooling - going to school and doing school at home. Our older 3 kids were homeschooled - the boys from 3rd grade through high school, JJ all the way (K-HS). Long story short, we tried it; we liked it; it worked for us. I spent some time explaining homeschooling to Alice yesterday and even took her to a homeschool PE class where we go for our tai chi classes.

We had our meeting with the middle school guidance counselor and the ESL teacher on Thursday afternoon. I will try to be charitable in my description, but I did not come home feeling good about the situation. Everyone we've dealt with from the public school (international student office and at the middle school) have been very helpful, friendly and encouraging. I believe they are doing the best and offering us what is available.

BUT --- a child being bumped from 4th grade to 6th grade, 3/4 of the way through the school year, would struggle to succeed without some means of filling the academic gap. No offers or suggestions have been made as to how they will bring her up to grade level other than to just put her in the classroom and the teachers will make adjustments for her.

+ ADD to that the fact that she is not socially or emotionally acting like a 12-13 year old girl, more like a 10-11 year old. + ADD the cultural differences. Now +++ ADD language! She scored 1 on a scale of 0-6 (0 means no English at all) for writing, reading, listening and speaking English.

The middle school is planning to put her in 6th grade math, language arts (English), social studies, science, PE (with health), plus 2 electives. She will receive ESL (English as a Second Language) instruction 2 class periods a week (about 2 hours total). The ESL would involve either being removed from one of her classes or the ESL teacher possibly working with her in the class. She was provided with a bilingual dictionary which only provides the word in the opposite language - no definitions or descriptions. She would be allowed to sit near the front of the class to minimize distraction, have extra time, have her tests read to her and use her dictionary. That is the what they're offering. PERIOD.

The kicker for me was when the counselor explained that her class schedule would be determined based on which PE class she could fit her into. The state requires all students to have health, so Alice must be placed in a PE class that has not finished the health portion of the curriculum already. I pointed out that Alice will not understand the instruction and was told, "it's a state mandate that all students have health." Hmmm. Seems being physically present during the instruction counts as having health even if it's taught in a language she doesn't understand.

So for me it seems that the public school is most concerned with satisfying the compulsory attendance law, with not nearly enough interest in the actual education. They are compelled to abide by the laws of the state. I get that. But apparently there is no common sense built into the system. For example, if Alice were to start school before next Thursday she would be required to take the state wide assessment tests being given. She would only have to sit for 20 minutes of the test and could be excused at that point, but still sitting for 20 minutes to be tested to measure how well the schools have improved student performance makes no sense for her.

So at the moment we have had a set back in terms of school plans. I've consulted with our case manager at the adoption agency. We'll consult with our social worker on Monday during our first post placement visit. I have some ideas, but for now I seriously doubt that Alice will be starting at our local middle school next week.

To end on a happier note, we did a little shoe shopping today. While Alice would have preferred something a bit dressier, we went with practical. Her old shoes were not giving her enough support. We found an athletic shoe which supports her ankles and feet better and they're pink!

Old shoes

New shoes

Water shoes, since it was buy one, get one ½ price.
And they have pink on them.