Well, I started off the day at 6:30am with a parent teacher conference at em's school. Her teacher is having a baby next month so she is doing them a little early. I was a little unsure of her teacher at the beginning of the year because she looks like she is 20 and has 28 kids to deal with, but I feel much better after talking with her. We started the meeting out with a prayer that we said together asking for God's blessing on Emily on her journey of education and for His help in guiding her teacher and Scott and I to lead her down the right path. I was so impressed and felt like she had the same priorities as I do. I was even more relieved to find out how well she is doing and is at the level of a second semester second grader if not third grade in reading. She will start an accelerated reading program where she will pick out a book at the library that is challenging and after reading it twice her teacher will test her on it. She had to do a book report. Can you imagine? First graders dealing with reading comprehension? I was lucky if I could see spot run at that age. I also like that each grade is paired up with an upper grade student to do one on one reading. They call them reading buddies and once a week they get together to read to each other. It is supposed to build confidence in reading aloud and gives the older kids a feeling of doing service and helping others. Emily just loves her buddy and said she is glad because she is like having a big sister.
I was at her school during recess and just loved to see our newly ordained priest doing jump rope with the girls. He is quite talented! Our pastor, Fr. Joe who is very animated himself, said his mission while he is here is to make himself visible as much as possible and to share his joy of life as a priest to as many kids as he can and I think he is a great mentor for our new priest. I think the best way to inspire new vocations is to make priests visible and accessible to kids. Growing up I can only remeber one priest, fr. Costello, who even remotely looked like he loved his life and vocation. Most of the priests were harsh and I was afraid of them. I want my children to be able to run up and hug the priest after mass. To me that is more the image of Jesus that they are there to represent.
Anyway, gotta go!
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3 comments:
Awe... my little Em's!!!
Great job, Emmy!
We are starting that accelerated program with Emma also - isn't it great that they even offer that?
All the kids had to read books to the class this week and they all chose ones they had memorized like Brown Bear, Brown Bear....or whatever. But Emma chose one of those Level One First Readers - a book about Cinderella and she read it to the class! She said she struggled with a few words, but still did it! I am so proud of her, because she chose a challenging book and did it!
I would love more info on the reading buddies. Are they seperate from their regular buddies?
I am not sure how they match up the reading buddies. It is a fourth grader and a first grader and they meet once a week for 30 minutes to read to each other. they will also do like a secret santa for christmas. They also have their big brothers/sisters in 8th grade but other than sitting by them in church I do not know what else they do with them if anything academically.
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