Yesterday was a quiet day at the co-op. Several of the families just weren't going to make it. It felt a little strange to be there with so few people there. Even so, it wasn't too bad. It was just one of those days I guess.
Because of the events of the day, things didn't go as planned. We've been combining the kinder-music class with the sign language class for practicality. Both of them take about a half of the time and the Littles really seem to be more interested in the fun things the Super Littles are doing, so it made it challenging. It's hard when you have to hear the music from next door, which sounds like so much fun, and then have to sit and pay attention. I get where they're coming from. Yesterday the sign teacher was out, so we ended up skipping the sign portion of the class. No one really seemed to know what to do and I'll be honest, I wanted to continue the class without her, but I couldn't imagine what I would teach! I'm very rusty at sign at best! We don't really use it at home much, and never have, so I'm not terribly familiar. However, all of the kids got to enjoy the play time, and the music was a hit, as always.
For the third class of the day, I was alone. I have to admit, I hadn't really talked to the mom who had offered to help me watch the two Super Littles, and someone had suggested we just bring them all to the Littles' class on the human body. We decided to give that a go. It meant I didn't have to be brave enough to come out of my shell and talk to a mom I barely knew for a whole hour. My littlest one was tired and cranky the whole class, and I think the two Super Littles were distracting, but for one class it wasn't the end of the world, and the teacher didn't seem to mind, so we just went with it. It was just going to be for one class because of the absences, and it was a nice chance to see what my older son was doing.
Late last night, just as I was curling up to sleep, I got an e-mail from the woman organizing the co-op. She was asking all the moms of the Littles and the Super Littles how they felt about the two age groups and classes. She wanted to know how we all felt about the situation. There were a lot of changes in the co-op for this semester. The Middles were divided in two. The Littles just opened up to four-year-olds, when previous to that the youngest were five year olds. Now we're looking at the combination of classes and she was wondering if we wanted to do that, or if we'd thought it better to keep them separate, or how we wanted to go with it. This is our co-op. What do we want to do with it?
I have to admit, I was thrilled to have it come up in such an open and immediate way. She was very direct with the question, and definitely was leaving it up to us parents to discuss, share, and figure out what we wanted to do. Ideas are already flowing and it's only been a day. Four of the moms from those age groups have already weighed in and it hasn't even been a whole day since that e-mail went out. It seems like we all agree the third class of the day was a one-time thing in order to deal with the absences, but in the future, the classes will be separate. It also seems that about half the moms like the new format of the second class. I love how one mom put it. The reason she homeschools is to get away from rigid structure. What happened in the class is just a reflection of that go with the flow feeling she's going for. I very much feel the same way.
I don't know what the end result of all of this will be. Even with my very strong willed nature, I've got no attachment to the outcome (something that's very unusual for me). I'm happy no matter how things go because my kids are loving the co-op, and now I have confidence that I will too!
On top of it all, there was a mother there that I was a little concerned about. It's not that I thought she was a bad parent or anything. I just thought there could be considerable friction between us because of our varying views. I mentioned an idea last week and she immediately shot it down. I felt like she was treating me like I didn't know what I was talking about. I was concerned that we would continue down this path. She and I would continue not to see eye to eye. Between talking to her for a good long while yesterday and her input on the discussion, I'm really feeling like we perhaps see more eye to eye than I thought. I'm actually starting to *gasp* like her!
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