The Report Cards

Last Friday Taylor's first report card came home. I wasn't overly happy with it, the math marks were terrible, mostly Cs. We had her parent/teacher interviews yesterday and I met with her teacher as well as the resource teacher. Her teacher said she needed to work on her multiplication and the rest of math should come along quite easily. No worries about her English or French, and other subjects were fairly good. So off we went to see the resource teacher as I had to sign her IPP paperwork. She proceeded to inform Taylor that her teacher has said if she does not become more self motivated and pull up her marks he doesn't want her to continue in gifted programming. I thought Taylor was about to cry. She only does this program once a week, and only for an hour at that. She loves it though. I am hoping that that was the push she needed to actually make her try a wee bit harder.

And then there was Liam. Oh, Liam. I knew his English marks would not be great. I'd rather pull out my own teeth than try and get Liam to study his spelling. But I expected all excellents, or As, in his Math. And what I got was proficient ( Bs.) Liam is not proficient at math, he is brilliant. The comments were good, but I don't feel the marks reflect that. Of all his marks, there is only one excellent and that comes in Religion (and I was shocked, he hates Religion...this is the kid who refused to take First Communion)

I meet with his teacher next Thursday. And I have alot to say to her. She doesn't give them homework, other than spelling words and home reading. I want something to start coming home, even if he is just redoing sheets that were done that day. I want to see where he is. I want to know why I wasn't told before report cards that he wasn't using class time effectively, or completing in class work. We are almost 3 months into school and I had no idea.

It pisses me off that he had to change schools to do this academic support program and he got a worse report card there than he would have at the old school. At least there he was happy. I am seriously tempted to pull him and put him back into a school where all his friends are, where I am only 5 minutes away and where I know his teacher and if he's not doing what he should be doing they are going to tell me. I am pissed off at the old school for not providing him with a teacher's aide like they seem to do for every kid who's a troublemaker. We have 17 T.A.'s in that school. There is no way there are 17 children with more severe learning problems than Liam. I am pissed off at myself for not fighting for Liam's right to an education at his neighbourhood school. My mother said last year that I should have taken this issue to the media and I think she may have been right. The sad reality is that money talks, and I don't have any. (Long story about an LD child and her lawyer father and teacher mother and her TA and blah, blah, blah. Someone tell me to shutup.)