Fourth Grade - or - Why This School is the Best for Olivia

Open-house at the girls’ school was on Tuesday.

Thought Alyssa had picked up her schedule, locker assignment and combination a week before, we had to go Tuesday to drop off Oliva’s twenty folders (okay, three), her markers, the socks she’ll need to use as dry-erase erasers and the many, many, MANY other school supplies she’ll need for fourth grade (a protractor? Really….?)

We also paid the school fees for the year. Freshman fees are only $24. Fourth grade fees are $50. Damn, fourth grade must be a big learning year.

When we got to O’s new class room (at the end of the junior high hallway…that is one smelly hallway…just saying) we found her desk and the little card that told us which locker was her. It also had the combination to that lock.

Yes.

Fourth grade is the year they start with combination locks at Liv’s school.

Lyss’s class was the last one to wait until fifth grade for combination locks. She stressed about that damned combination from May until the night before her first day of fifth grade. I bought her a combination lock at Walmart in June that year so she could practice. She was fine…obviously.

Olivia…did not stress over the combination lock. She truly could not possibly care less about that combination lock.

The day of open house, she started practicing with the lock we’d bought Lyss all those years ago. Tom went so far as to lock Liv’s tablet in a box and the only way she could get it out was to master the combination lock.

She found something else to do. I think she’d decided, “Screw you guys. I mastered tying my damned shoes, forget combination locks!”

So we got to the school and tried the lock. She’d spin the combination thingy so fast you could barely see the numbers. Stopping at 22 was nearly impossible for her. I’d tell her when she got to 30 to slow down and try to stop right at 22.

Nope, every single time, she’d stop at 20.

We kept at it until my knees started to ache from kneeling beside her.

Her special ed teacher came along and watched our ‘progress’. She told me that the aide would be there each morning to work with Liv until she mastered the lock herself. She also talked to Olivia’s regular classroom teacher and asked if it was okay for O to keep her backpack and lunch in the classroom for at least the first few weeks until she got the lock thing down.

Mrs. K, her classroom teacher was very accommodating.

I didn’t have access to email the day after open house. But when I opened my email this morning, I had this message from Liv’s special ed teacher:

Good morning,

Here is what the office decided for Olivia's locker. They took her lock off of the one she will be using.

However, I still want her to practice a combo lock for the fine motor practice. She will practice with locker 000 and the combination is XX-XX-XX. She will practice in the morning with Mrs. K.

Mrs. B

How kind is that? They’re giving her the chance to learn to use a combination lock while taking away the pressure of having to do it first thing in the morning just to put her backpack and lunchbox away. They’re letting her learn but letting it happen at her pace.

I love Mrs. B. She insists that’s more stubborn than Olivia and quite honestly, Olivia needs a teacher like her. She makes her work while understanding that sometimes, she needs a little more time, a little more help, a little more patience.

We couldn’t be in a better place for Olivia to continue her education.