Report Card Reporting

Ken came home with his first report card on Friday, and I dutifully sent back the signed "Yes, I saw this" paper with him today.  I'll be honest, as much as I dislike the standardization of public education, getting his first real report card home felt like something big.  It wasn't what I think of when I think report card, so that definitely helped.  There were no A's or F's or numbers, just simple pluses, check marks, and non-standard letters (E=Excellent, G=Good, and more that I can't remember- we only had to look up those two, thankfully enough).  And comments!  Lots of room for comments (that was used by his teacher).

I may have started out as an early education major in undergrad, and I may have a bachelor's in psychology, but I'll be first to admit that I'm not at all clear on when milestones should occur, and what is "appropriate" developmentally.  Your three year old doesn't utter a word?  OK.  Your four month old isn't crawling?  WHOA!  Are you looking into that?  I have no clue as to when things are "supposed" to happen, or what kids "should" know at a given time.  Because of this, some form of report or feedback is a huge benefit for me.  Also because of this, I tend to expect more of El Shorto than is reasonable.  I'm working on that, but the kid frequently rises to the challenges faced in being my spawn. 

And for once, it was really nice to see that what the teacher saw matched up with what I saw pretty consistently.  Maybe not exactly, but the trends were there.  He does best in Science (me), and Social Studies (Dwight), and pretty well in Math (again, me).  Not so well in social interactions, and is majorly lacking in self-control (guess who?  Me).  He's performing adequately in all the other areas.  No major surprises either way, and I was happy about that.  Have we talked about how much I dislike surprises? 

It's a nice feeling, hearing that he's "on-track" and "progressing" and what have you.  A little bit of reassurance goes a long way.  And it lets mama know where she can stop pushing so hard, and where she should be focusing.  It doesn't make the pushing on subjects like reading any easier, but it's a direction, right?

In other news, Dutch citizen rolls grew by one very important person today.  That makes me happy.  :-)