I had an awesome year in school from September 2008 to June 2009. I enjoyed the time I was able to spend with my friends. I’m going to miss my fourth grade year but I have some great memories.

I was in the fourth-grade gifted and talented (G.T.) math and reading program every Monday this past year. The purpose of G.T. is to challenge the students who aren’t learning that much in math and reading. Mr. Reinhartsen (Mr. R) is my gifted and talented teacher. I enjoyed learning how to calculate the area of a circle and a triangle. To find the area of a triangle, you multiply the height times the width and then divide by two. To find the area of a circle, you first multiply the radius by itself. Then multiply that answer by pi. It’s very simple. Mr. Reinhartsen began putting me in fifth-grade math G.T. on Wednesdays in addition to my Monday G.T. because I’m especially good at math. It was fun to see my older friends from my previous 3rd/4th-grade multi-age class. I LOVE G.T.!

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I had the pleasure today of having a conference with Skye’s teacher to discuss Skye’s progress. Skye is doing very well. No surprises.

What troubled me about our meeting were a couple of statements made by her teacher.

She doesn’t give more homework because, quite frankly, it wouldn’t get done. The students are too involved with extracurricular activities, video games, and television. She said that for many parents academics takes a back seat to everything else in their children’s busy schedules.

She said her primary responsibility is to work with the pupils who struggle the most. Anything she does to challenge Skye and other bright kids, such as assigning independent work or helping them with advanced concepts, is beyond what is required. She has limited time and resources and is mandated to focus on the kids who need the most help. If it weren’t for her teacher making extra efforts Skye would be left to teach herself or simply go at a much slower pace than she is capable.

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Kirsten earned a 4.0 GPA this semester. She worked her butt off and deserves some recognition. I am wicked proud of her!!

You go girl. I love you, Kir.

She also aced (100%) every category of the math portion of the Nurse Entrance Test (NET) and earned a composite score on the entire exam that puts her in the 96th percentile of the nation! Hooray!

I think she deserves lunch at Gilbert’s Chowder House, at least. ;)

I’m in GT (Gifted and Talented). It is exiting, wonderful, cool, fun, and demanding. We get to read challenging books, answer questions, and discuss what we read. We read books like “The Secret Garden” and “The Phantom Tollbooth”.

In math we get to do all these fun things like finding the area of a triangle, multiply two digit numbers, and divide by thousands. Math is my favorite subject.

The GT teacher is Mr. Reinhartsen. I love GT.

I’m very pleased with the schools here and with each of the girl’s teachers. We recently just met with them for parent-teacher conferences.

We first met with Jenna’s 2nd-grade teacher, Miss Holland. She just started teaching at Fairfield this year and seems to be a good match for Jenna. Jenna told us that she doesn’t like recess because there’s nothing to do. Apparently she just stands around watching the other kids. She likes to swing, but the swings are always being used by other children. We mentioned our concern about Jenna’s anxiety to Miss Holland, who ensured that she would observe Jenna during recess. She did mention to us that Jenna has been coming out of her shell since school started and has been speaking up more during class. She is interacting with the other kids at her table and seems to be adjusting well. She is doing very well academically, and particularly enjoys math, reading, and writing. Jenna loves to read. I enjoy listening to her while she reads aloud, with her various voice inflections, and I am often surprised by her subject matter choices. She’s very inquisitive and loves to learn. Miss Holland’s only suggestion for Jenna: to color the accompanying pictures to her stories more often. If that’s her main concern, I think we’re doing pretty well. She’s in Brownies again this year, which she absolutely loves. She gets to sell Girl Scout cookies, so now I have a great excuse to buy those Thin Mints…

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