Leaving Public School

Blog Challenge "100 posts in 100 days" Post #22

We entered 6th grade with high hopes thinking that this might be the year that things start to get better! I thought that maybe switching classes, getting up and moving to a different subject several times a day might help Chandler focus on the topic at hand. 

The second week of school my mom was taken to the emergency room, and two weeks after that, she passed away. My mom was amazing. The most optimistic, caring, understanding, giving person I've ever known. She was my person, my voice of reason, my sounding board, my safety net, my reminder that no matter what everything was going to be ok. 

I want to say that I endured and still maintained being an engaged mom of a 6th-grade boy, but if I'm honest, I could've been better. I could have done more. In some ways, I failed Chandler. It is hard admitting that but I know I'm not the first person to stumble and I won't be the last. All we can do is get back up and be better. 

Chandler was a Mamaw's boy from the day he was born. After losing his Aunt Sherry just two years before that, he took it pretty hard. We tried counseling again, and I'm not sure if it helped much or not, but I felt like that was what we were supposed to do so we did. 

The weekly (sometimes daily) phone calls started coming from his school again, and the issues ranged from "he didn't turn in his homework" or "he can't eat lunch because he has a past due balance of $0.20". Around the middle of the year, we received a call from the principal. 

The principal (who I like and have great respect for) said that there had been an issue during lunch with Chandler and three other boys. After speaking with all 4 of the boys involved, several witnesses, and one of the teachers, I got a summed up version of what happened.

Apparently, during one of Chan's morning classes, he and another boy finished their work early and asked the teacher if they could play computer games. The teacher said yes so they played. I guess Chandler won the game and the other boy was mad about it. At lunchtime the boy got two of his friends and began picking on Chandler, pushing him, trying to trip him, trying to hit him, and Chandler fought back. 

All of the boys were fine, a few minor scratches, but because of the incident and the previous trouble he had been in, he ended up spending the rest of the school year in isolation. He was left to fend for himself, learning from a computer software program (online curriculum) with no teacher, just an adult in the room to serve as a monitor. 

By the end of the year, I knew that he wouldn't go back to Catoosa again for 7th grade. We had to make a change. I started researching our options and settled on giving public charter school a try.

Stay tuned, so much more to come on this adventure of ours!