James Fun

Last week, James turned to me after school and said, "I'm actually catching up. I kinda like school now!" 

*huge sigh of relief* I gave him a big, big hug. 

With his 12th birthday, James asked for a chance to get together with some friends from 5th grade. Since James NEVER asks to hang out with friends, I said, "Heck yeah, let's make this happen!"

We invited all of his friends from newspaper club last year. Most of them attend Urbana Middle School except the two kids Matthew's age who were relocated to a different elementary school when our neighborhood school was converted to a dual-language-only facility. Matthew would have gone there, too.

The kids compared schools and classes to each other. The middle school stories were sobering, and not very surprising. We heard about fights in the halls ending up with kids and/or teachers needing medical attention. We heard about math classes so disrupted by disrespectful kids that they had to reorganize the classes all over again. They told us about boys' bathrooms with no doors on the stalls, garbage on the floor, and broken sinks.

James didn't feel so bad about his middle school complaints after that. NGS gives a lot of homework, yeah, but he's also in an environment that supports learning at that pace. 

James found some fossils in the rock bed by the playground today. He used to spend most of his recess time doing that in elementary school.

James was out sick from school three days this week. We were able to do most of his classwork at home, though, thanks to his teachers doing a lot of assignments online. Everything is online now. But even with all the work at home done earlier, James still needed 5 hours to completely finish the homework he had missed over 3 days. He was cheerful about it, though, and got more confident the further along we went. It gave me hope for next week.

Next week, inspired by another one of James' requests that don't often come, we'll be renting an RV and traveling to Niagara Falls. We'll stop along the way at several car and aerospace museums, and take a day to explore a bit of Ontario, Canada, on our way back. By "we", I mean me, Alex, James, and Matthew. The two Roberts will stay home to keep working and enjoy the blissful silence. RVs are all new to us. Can't wait!