FRDNRWEWNTTOALSFRIZ

It's school conferences week. We kicked off our tour in Kindergarten today, and the first words out of Max's teacher were "That Max. He's a pistol."

Not exactly what a mom hopes to hear at her child's first educational checkup. But she did laugh and shake her head. I could only apologize.

He is apparently quite the entertainer whenever there's a captive audience at hand. (I warned them of this on his pre-K paperwork.) His teacher also busted him under the projects table trying to cut his hair last week.

To his credit, she said he's amazing in math and is progressing on task with early literacy and writing skills. He is also "not mean" and "doesn't need any behavior modification." Those are positives indeed. But he does talk ALOT. She thinks that could fix itself with a little "maturity." I'm not so sure...

To my surprise, she showed me pages in his writing journals, and he is actually building words, thoughts, and pages. I found it fascinating to read things like this: FRDNRWEWNTTOALSFRIZ

Translation: For dinner, we went to Al's Fries.

I envision that pink little mind working hard to think about the beginning and ending sounds of words. How exciting is that? I would've never guessed he could do it. In a few weeks/months, he'll add spaces in between those words and start adding vowels. I could've spent a couple of hours talking over the process of learning with Max's teacher, but she cut me off after 30 minutes due to other parents waiting in the hallway.

Did I ever mention that I've always wanted to be a teacher? There's a good chance I may have missed that boat. I didn't really realize this until about 10 years ago after my own kids were born and I had the chance to reconnect with lure of literacy. Instead, I got caught in the corporate tides. (Not a complaint; I have a great job.) But hey, there's still time, and you never know where the tides may take you...

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