Enchanted

We went to visit Braedan’s school on Tuesday. We just showed up and got buzzed in, so I could show him around since we did all the orientation/Open House/playdates at Boulevard before we bought the new house.

The secretary walked us around, showed us the music room and art room, the gym and library. We checked out the three kindergarten classrooms which are tucked into a quiet corner (yes, with actual walls around them!). There are actually four classrooms back in that wing, one extra for the kindergarteners to eat lunch in so they don’t have to navigate the sea of “big kids” in the regular cafeteria. That room also has a Smart Board, which is very cool … and makes me feel sort of old. When I was teaching in this district, not so very long ago, we were advanced enough to have four computers in each classroom and were able to hook one up to a wall-mounted television for whole group instruction, but that pales in comparison to the technical wizardry of the SmartBoard. And don’t even get me started on the film strips of my own elementary years (remember sniffing freshly mimeographed worksheets?).

His teacher wasn’t in that day but we met some others and everyone was super super friendly. He and Austin even got lollipops from the music teacher who was a teeny bit nicer than ours 25 years ago (that was sarcasm — how many of you remember the dreaded Mr. Bataglia?!). The school seems to do a really good job of keeping the kindergarteners segregated in their own secure little area. They enter and exit through their own entrance and have their own smaller playground in the back of the school. Braedan was not super pleased with this fact since he favors the more challenging monkey bars, but I loved it. It’s tucked away in this enchanted garden, complete with pebble walkways and little benches scattered underneath the trees. It’s sort of magical.

I have yet to bump into my old fifth grade teacher, who is still there (the famous “Mr. I”). He ought to last at least a few more years so maybe he’ll get another (half) Dietrich in his class.

All in all, it was a lovely experience and gave Braedan a concrete image of what “big kid school” looks and feels like. Like any five-year-old, he was especially impressed with having a water fountain inside his classroom! Ah, to have such easily met standards ….