Tristan and School

Well, here's an update. About 3 weeks ago we had a teacher conference for Tristan. His teacher mentioned that she was having problems with Tristan being "off-task" a lot and "roaming" the classroom instead of sitting in his seat. Overall, it didn't seem like a big issue and she kept saying that she knew that Tristan is very smart and that even though he gets distracted easily he is still learning...even when it doesn't look like he is in class. We asked her to keep us updated on what was happening in the classroom so we could reinforce the correct behaviors at home. We gave her our contact numbers and email and told her that email was usually the best way to contact us unless it was urgent. So a week later, we get 2 "disciplinary reports" home for Tristan (no email/no calls). One was for "eating dirt" on the playground...one was for "pulling his pants down in the bathroom". Ummm, he's 6 and a boy. Anyway, in response to those reports we sent in a letter reiterating that we wanted to be notified of any of his behaviors so that we could work with him at home. We also said that we hadn't received any communication prior to these reports coming home that these were still issues. Well, the teacher got the letter and called us up (talked to Jason) and was quite offended by the letter. Long story short, we asked for an ARD meeting (kinda like a conference--with Speech, OT, PT, teacher, parents, principal, etc) and the first thing out of the teacher's mouth was "well, if you want another teacher, that's fine". That has really frustrated us!!! So today, we got an email about how Tristan was so distracted this morning that he had to be sent to the office to do his work. Jason and I then went up to the school...talked to Tristan, and scheduled a sit-down meeting with the principal.

Our meeting with the principal was only for 20 minutes but we feel it went well. We were able to voice our concerns and get her take on the situation also. We have a tentative ARD meeting on Thursday of next week. We will be doing further testing on Tristan just to see if we can get any more answers about his needs and what can help him (psychological, etc). Hopefully, these evaluations can give us more info about Tristan and his delays. We also had a parent/teacher conference for Rehanyn today (she has Tristan's AWESOME Kindergarten teacher). Rehanyn is doing well and her teacher is very happy with her progress. Mrs. C was also willing to let us talk to her about Tristan and said that she would talk to Tristan's 1st Grade teacher and see if she could give her some pointers about how to best make Tristan pay attention. We LOVE Mrs. C!!!!!

So that is where we are just now. Just pray that we can get this figured out so that Tristan's teacher isn't frustrated ('cause that's what we think is happening) and so that Tristan has a GREAT year in 1st grade!

Tanya