Our First Real-Deal Conference

In other news, we went to our first non-preschool parent-teacher conference.  Parents were instructed to bring their kindergartners, so at three o'clock on Friday, we set off with Our Hero to meet with Mrs. Dvorak.  Joe likes Mrs. Dvorak so much that he could barely speak because he was smiling so much.  So we confirmed that he likes Mrs. Dvorak, he likes kindergarten, and he has some buddies.  These are not insubstantial things in that before Joe began kindergarten, we were asked to write a hope or dream we had for Joe in kindergarten, and we somewhat clumsily perhaps packed all of ours into "We just hope he likes school."  We figure life's a little easier if you can like he thing the law requires you to do for 13 years at least.  So check: he likes his teacher, the other kids, and school.

We also learned that Mrs. Dvorak has Our Hero pegged: really bright, knows a lot of things, but not always able to focus on what she would like him to focus.  Mrs. Dvorak walked us through where Joe was at with respect to the kindergarten outcomes and how she is challenging him in the areas where he has reached the outcome.  For example, instead of writing just one sentence, he'll be asked to try to make up and write two.  So there's no moss on him, but sometimes he's terrible busy thinking about the moss--or whatever--and can't be bothered to think about what the class is doing.  Mrs. Dvorak told us that often, at group time, Joe will often be looking around the room, and that she can tell it's because he's reading all the words he sees--which is great--and that he's usually tracking what she's saying, but that he's not showing her that by focusing on her.  That all sounded very, very familiar.  Additionally, Mrs. Dvorak said, "Now, I know he doesn't like to color [No!  Again--she's got his number.], but we do need to learn to focus to be a 'three-star' colorer*."  So we have to focus on focusing!  (And perhaps coloring.)

*A three-star colorer stays in the lines, colors an area completely, and does something else that we can't remember.

Keen-eyed observers will note that the figure in Joe's self-portrait has no arms.  Must be somewhere with the focus.