Fingers crossed

Well...we started 7th grade.

You may recall my gut-wrenching decision to pull Jaysen out of mainstream education, and to place him in a self-contained EI classroom. And believe me, it was gut-wrenching. There were many tears. And wine. There was lots of wine.

The verdict-
BEST.DECISION.EVER.

I never thought I'd say that, but he is absolutely in the best environment for him at this time.
Not only is my kid doing real classwork- he's in a super supportive environment to boot.

Case in point: There is an obnoxious kid in the class (I can totally call him obnoxious a) because he is and b) because he picks on and bullies Jaysen). So this obnoxious kid...decides he's going to keep targeting Jaysen. Nothing remarkable here, just your everyday typical bullying that Jaysen had been exposed to.
Here's what makes it different. The teacher (I'll get to his wonderfulness in a bit), has created a sense of community in the classroom. So when this kid got up to bully Jaysen, as he does frequently, the 3 kids whose desks are around Jaysen, saw this kid coming towards him. They all got up, and stood behind Jaysen, who was still seated at his desk.

Then...
One of the kids stopped the bully and was telling him to stop and turn around, and go back to his seat.

While...
The other two kids flanked Jaysen, and reassured him to just ignore the kid, and that Mr. Smith would be there soon to tell them what to do. When they had instruction from Mr. Smith, they would follow his instruction because he'll know what to do.

Wow.

Did you catch all of that awesomeness???
I know it's a lot. Allow me to bullet point.

* My child is learning. He's never had an educational environment that's been supportive of him in any way, let alone academically.

* My child's classroom is not only educational, it's a community. They look out for each other.

* My child has peers looking out for him. They not only look out for him, they encourage and mentor him!

So full of awesome, I can't even contain it.

I'll get to the awesome teacher in an upcoming post. I just had to reestablish myself in the blog world before my fans (namely, my father) leave me.

If you are still here, from back when I actually blogged for real...thank you and I love you!


*These are not actual asterisks, I am just that computer illiterate and can't master actual bulletpoints.