The first days of school- Jacob
The kids have three days of school behind them and are currently (no phone call to the contrary) in their fourth day at school. Here's how the "battle" aka school looks so far from Jacob's perspective:
Jacob: Jacob started high school on Tuesday. High School. I get a pit in my stomach when I think about it or when, like yesterday, I drove to the school to drop off his lunch that he forgot to take with him in the morning. He was not looking forward to beginning this new challenge. He knows we expect him to get good grades. The good news is that he's more than capable of getting good grades and has received good grades since he was in second grade (the first grade in which grades are given).
He was particularly not looking forward to learning a foreign language. That will be a new kind of learning. He chose German because I convinced him that I could help him with it. I've interjected a few German phrases here in there in our daily life to give all of the kids a little exposure to the language. Jacob complains that it's an ugly sounding language. Ja voll- no one's ever thought any differently about it!
Jacob has had little homework so far in any of his classes, but I'm sure much of that is attributable to it being the first week of school and classrooms aren't really up and running from an academic standpoint completely.
Jacob isn't riding the school bus this year. He is very pleased about that. Imagine a high schooler having to ride the same bus as 6th graders. Unthinkable! Malcolm is driving him to school and home each day. One of my friends asked me if I was worried about him bring driven to school by another kid. No worries because the traffic is literally bumper to bumper from our house to the 1.5 miles to the high school. Speed tops out at maybe 10 miles an hour.
All in all, so far the past few days have not been bad for Jacob. He hasn't complained about anything in particular. Obviously he doesn't want to be there but he seems to be accepting school as a reality and realizing that complaining about it accomplishes nothing. He actually wants to buy the school lunches (or their a la cart items) because he says some of the items look not too bad (and because almost all of his friends buy lunches). So I added $200.00 to his lunch account yesterday (will be curious to see how long that lasts) and enjoyed not making his lunch this morning!
Jacob had a soccer scrimmage after the first day of school on Tuesday against Sycamore. It was kind of an odd way to start the new school year~ Jacob didn't come home from school; rather Malcolm dropped him off at Wade Field (where the scrimmage was to take place at 4:00 pm) on his way home. The temperature at 4:00 pm was about as bad as you can image the temperature being in August in Ohio. I mean, sitting in the bleachers resulted in pools of sweat forming and soaking through clothes. I can't even imagine moving in weather like that. The boys played a little bit flat but I didn't think they played too horribly given they were all probably very tired from getting up early for school and from the heat. We won 2-1. Donnie came home from work early to catch the scrimmage so we were all home by 5:30 or so. I made a quick trip to Penn Station for our dinner (in my defense of not having a nice homemade meal waiting for us in the Crockpot was that our fridge was not working so I had no food with which to make dinner!) and we all gathered around the table to talk about Day 1 at school.
My daily prayer for Jacob is for wisdom, discernment, safety and never forgetting that he's God's (and our!) beloved child.
Good luck in high school, Bub. Ich leibe dich mein Sohn.
And they're off...
Jacob: Jacob started high school on Tuesday. High School. I get a pit in my stomach when I think about it or when, like yesterday, I drove to the school to drop off his lunch that he forgot to take with him in the morning. He was not looking forward to beginning this new challenge. He knows we expect him to get good grades. The good news is that he's more than capable of getting good grades and has received good grades since he was in second grade (the first grade in which grades are given).
He was particularly not looking forward to learning a foreign language. That will be a new kind of learning. He chose German because I convinced him that I could help him with it. I've interjected a few German phrases here in there in our daily life to give all of the kids a little exposure to the language. Jacob complains that it's an ugly sounding language. Ja voll- no one's ever thought any differently about it!
Jacob has had little homework so far in any of his classes, but I'm sure much of that is attributable to it being the first week of school and classrooms aren't really up and running from an academic standpoint completely.
Jacob isn't riding the school bus this year. He is very pleased about that. Imagine a high schooler having to ride the same bus as 6th graders. Unthinkable! Malcolm is driving him to school and home each day. One of my friends asked me if I was worried about him bring driven to school by another kid. No worries because the traffic is literally bumper to bumper from our house to the 1.5 miles to the high school. Speed tops out at maybe 10 miles an hour.
All in all, so far the past few days have not been bad for Jacob. He hasn't complained about anything in particular. Obviously he doesn't want to be there but he seems to be accepting school as a reality and realizing that complaining about it accomplishes nothing. He actually wants to buy the school lunches (or their a la cart items) because he says some of the items look not too bad (and because almost all of his friends buy lunches). So I added $200.00 to his lunch account yesterday (will be curious to see how long that lasts) and enjoyed not making his lunch this morning!
Jacob had a soccer scrimmage after the first day of school on Tuesday against Sycamore. It was kind of an odd way to start the new school year~ Jacob didn't come home from school; rather Malcolm dropped him off at Wade Field (where the scrimmage was to take place at 4:00 pm) on his way home. The temperature at 4:00 pm was about as bad as you can image the temperature being in August in Ohio. I mean, sitting in the bleachers resulted in pools of sweat forming and soaking through clothes. I can't even imagine moving in weather like that. The boys played a little bit flat but I didn't think they played too horribly given they were all probably very tired from getting up early for school and from the heat. We won 2-1. Donnie came home from work early to catch the scrimmage so we were all home by 5:30 or so. I made a quick trip to Penn Station for our dinner (in my defense of not having a nice homemade meal waiting for us in the Crockpot was that our fridge was not working so I had no food with which to make dinner!) and we all gathered around the table to talk about Day 1 at school.
My daily prayer for Jacob is for wisdom, discernment, safety and never forgetting that he's God's (and our!) beloved child.
Good luck in high school, Bub. Ich leibe dich mein Sohn.
And they're off...
Soccer scrimmage...
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