Tuesday 12 August 2014

School Stress

As I mentioned in my last post the last couple of weeks have been a little bit stressful…

About 2 weeks ago, Paul got a message from International HR, advising us that our contract extension was 99.9% definite.  I know I said to all at Christmas that we would be back next year, but Paul's company love him so much that they want to keep him here another year.  Ok, not quite, but it has been made possible for us to stay another year through a few movements within the group.

Our date for returning to the UK is now 30th August 2016.  While on the communicator, the lady mentioned that we would now be eligible to get Isaac into Oliver's school, and would we like to?

HELL YEAH!!!!!!

This all began 2 weeks before Isaac was meant to start at his old school.  Cue a lot of crazy phone calls.  I was in touch with Oliver's school administrator on the Monday to begin the process.  I filled in the online application, and awaited phone calls regarding testing.  The group testing at school was scheduled for the thursday, but had to be changed for the following Monday.  We were lucky enough to get the individual testing at Clarity on the Wednesday of the same week.  Funnily enough Sebastian already had a doctors appointment that day.  So the Wednesday afternoon we trotted off to Greenville for the testing for Isaac.  I like Clarity, I think they do a good job (probably cos they have never under-assessed our boys!).  The lady said it would take 45 minutes to an hour.  25 minutes later, he was done!  

This made us early for our doctors appointment, so we stopped for some cakes on the way!

Sebastians doctor is awesome.  Basically school had been querying his Hep B vaccination not being up to date, so she readily agreed to write a letter explaining that he was on a catch up schedule, and that immunization will be completed by September.  Then we had to talk varicella (chicken pox).  Oliver and Isaac both had severe chicken pox back in April 2011, when Seb was 3 months old.  Seb got a couple of spots, so I presumed he had immunity.  Unfortunately, school wanted proof, so the doctors had to take blood.  It took 3 nurses and the doctor plus me to get blood from him.  Not nice… But I was able to pick up the boys Immunisation Records ready for school, so that was something…. And an appointment was made for his next Hep B.  We also discussed his speech.  Although it is a lot better than it was, and he talks a lot more, there are still very few consonant sounds, so she referred him for speech therapy, again.

Friday morning, I had to go and see Isaacs teacher at his old school, and explain the situation.  She was very sad, only a week from term starting, and she may be losing one of her pupils.  I explained that it was best for the future for Isaac to be in a more structured environment, as that is what he will be in when we return to the UK.  I thanked her for all her hard work, and asked if she could fill in a form to send to the new school.
I came away from that meeting feeling a little, teary, which I had not expected.  It is a great school and Isaac has met some lovely people there, but we feel he is ready for a change that will facilitate his learning, and hopefully get him more interested in reading, and learning academically.  

Last Monday we trotted off to Oliver's school for Isaac's group testing.  I say group, it was him and the Lower School Director.  Oliver and I sat outside, and I could hear some of what she was asking.  After, she said he was very good at listening, needed a little work on fine motor skills (just like Oliver) and really good with numbers.  We were able to hand in the immunization records, and get his passport photocopied, so that was most of the paperwork, just waiting on Clarity results.

And then we waited…. and waited…… I eventually called Oliver's school Wednesday morning to ask for a progress report.  Clarity report was in, we just had to await the boards decision....  School called me back about 4pm that afternoon.  

HE WAS IN!!!!

Such a relief.  Thursday, the day before his old school started back, I had to call them and let them know he would not be there.  They were very understanding, and wished us all the best.  I fully intend to stay in touch with that school, as I would like to volunteer in the Middle School once my degree is done.  

I received another call on thursday, this time from the doctors.  Sebastian is not immune to chicken pox, so needs to be immunized.  That was yesterday afternoons fun task, 2 jabs.  Took 2 nurses….

We have since received the Clarity report ourselves, Isaac is average in nearly all areas and above average in number and math skills.  

We always knew he was awesome….


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