Today, Nicholas’ Grade One teacher, who has only known him for just over two weeks, called us to tell us how he is doing and for us to have the opportunity to ask her questions about the curriculum, etc. (It seems that this is the norm now for Grade One teachers to do this.)
I mentioned to the teacher that Nicholas doesn’t share a lot of the details of what he is learning at school. She wasn’t surprised to hear this overall but was surprised that he hadn’t told us about a specific situation that happened today.
As part of their French immersion curriculum, the grade one class learns new words every week. They practice writing them and saying them very frequently with the teacher and the class. The teacher then helps them with their pronunciation. The teacher tells us that today, Nicholas successfully pronounced the words on the first try with her. She was so impressed that she made him the teacher and she told the class that if they wanted some help with their words, they could see Nicholas. Many wanted to talk to him. He sat up tall in his chair and waited until they were all quiet and then he began one word at a time. She said she could tell he was quite proud of himself. Craig and I know that we have both of you to thank for teaching him the skills that led him to be competent and comfortable to do this so quickly in the new school year at a new school with new classmates. It is truly amazing that Nicholas, the quiet child of 4 years ago, would now lead new classmates through an oral exercise in a new language so comfortably. When we asked him about it after the conversation with his teacher, he said he shrugged it off smiling. And to think I was so nervous about his transition to Grade One!!
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