03/09/2025
To be honest, I started “hating” school before my child did. This was only first grade and homework would take hours. It would take us all week to learn FIVE simple spelling words. We would review every morning, every time we were in the car. Every night at bedtime. It felt like all we did was practice spelling words. Even with all of that, we were still reviewing over and over again on Thursday night before the test. The most frustrating part of it all was that the results were inconsistent. Doing everything that we were doing wasn’t guaranteed to result in a good grade.
That was the beginning of our official journey. My child was oblivious and still expressed enthusiasm for school. They hadn’t yet reached the age where they could realize that their peers weren’t working so hard. They probably thought that everyone had to review spelling words a million times 😩
I was preparing for my upcoming 504 meeting and I found the results of the very first evaluation in 2016. My child was observed for a 20 minute period of classroom instruction and an observational comparison was made between my child and a peer of the same age and gender. This evaluation was done a few times unannounced. The teacher didn’t know who was being evaluated.
The results were pretty jaw dropping. Upon observation, my child was pleasantly inattentive during the majority of instruction. They pointed out that they were able to answer some questions appropriately despite not appearing attentive. The teacher engaged my child several times and offered redirection but the time spent doing relevant “on task” behaviors was significantly less than the child being compared. The results were replicated several times before the results were presented.
So now that we know there is a problem, we set out to find the solution. School should not be a struggle for you or your child. If it is…it’s time to start asking questions. Thank you for sharing your struggle. It was very brave.
