Update on TRF education...

We had a meeting with Aaron's teacher and some of Challenger Elementary's support staff, including the staff psychologist and a couple of therapists yesterday. It's been a couple years since Aaron had a formal evaluation at Chase Lake. They're going to go ahead with another eval and see where he's at now as they think the results from a couple years ago are probably inaccurate. It should take up to a month to complete the testing and then we'll meet again to go over the results and formulate a game plan. They do it a little different here in Minnesota in terms of intensive learning/education support. They have Aaron in his regular classroom instead of separated in one for intensive learning with a home room for only part of the day. They appear to use a few more screening tools as well for identifying learning disabilities. Who's to know if it's "better" than what's been done thus far, but one thing's for sure, how committed they are to kids here.

I caught up with Howard Thorson, my old principal from the country school I went to, St. Hilaire. He ushers quite a bit for Trinity Lutheran and I also see him out at Challenger now. I think I now have an update on all of our teachers, Jen. There should have been 6 teachers total, K - 5. I think I already mentioned my fifth grade teacher, Tom Schaefer, is still teaching in the school district, still teaching fifth grade at Challenger. Sue or "Mrs. Froiland" who taught fourth grade at St. Hilaire now teaches at Challenger, though it may be third now. Our old third grade teacher, Mrs. Poole, is retired and apparently living in the St. Hilaire area. She's getting up in years now and Mr. Thorson mentioned she's been in failing health and perhaps some memory problems. The second grade teacher, Mrs. Cerkowniak (sp?) who taught me how to sing "Do your ears hang low," and "Head, shoulders, knees, and toes" was killed approximately 13 years ago before her 40th birthday in Arizona, the result of a head-on collision with a drunk driver. She unfortunately had children of her own left to grow up without their mom. As for the first grade teacher in St. Hilaire, Mrs. Miller, she's Aaron's second grade teacher at Challenger now. I didn't recognize her, but she remembers me and all the times Mrs. Froiland would drag me up to her classroom by the ear and force me to do my homework with the first graders. She was good friends with my second grade teacher. Sharon Iverson, the kindergarten teacher, is now still teaching at Challenger.

It's been snowing today, though the temperature is back above zero at 15.8 degrees. Aaron has a half day at school today and I'll be meeting his bus at 1:15 instead of 3:15 whereas Daniel had no school today, so he's home with us and playing racecar games on the PS2 with Andrew. Other than church continuing to be a fun activity with Lent services and choir practice, there's not much else to update on at this point. Just counting the days til spring is all.