School stuff

Yesterday Deniss and I had a meeting with his guidance counselor and all of his teachers. Well - it was supposed to be all but the most important one - the ESOL teacher was a no show. Anyway, it was a good meeting. Deniss was very nervous about it before hand. He had certainly never had a parent going to bat for him before. All meetings with teachers before were never for good reasons. I kept reassuring him that this was a good meeting - meant to find ways to help him.

When we left - he was happy. He now feels like we are mostly all on his side! (There is one teacher that wanted to only say his piece and not listen to what we had to say so I am a little concerned about him). But - for the most part, I think we found some ways to make the language barrier a little easier for Deniss. They are going to find a buddy for him in a couple of classes to read questions to him and write down his answers.

Hopefully the ESOL teacher will call me today for a rescheduled appointment. I really need some guidance on how to teach Deniss to read and write in English. I am not a trained teacher so my attempts are missing the mark a bit right now.

Anyway - we all have a lot of work to do to help Deniss. He is a great kid but understandably gets very frustrated and overwhelmed trying to learn in English.

Robin