Open house at school...

We went to Connor's school last night to visit his classroom and teacher. Last year, we had a really disappointing year at school. Connor was in a multiage classroom (2nd and 3rd graders) and it could have been great. However, the teacher was not up to the task and challenges of multiage. And remember, this was also our first experience with "public" school as Connor attended Catholic school in Hawaii and Rhode Island. Needless to say, we were not impressed with the Department of Defense school last year based on Connor's classroom experience. When I found out that Connor was assigned to Mr. LaGrave for 3rd grade, my heart sank. I had heard mixed reviews about him but the consistent negative I heard was that he piles on the homework. So Connor comes home with homework on the first day...it wasn't too bad. Connor comes out the 2nd day and is angry that he has 4 pages of homework.
We work through it, and it really wasn't too bad either.

At open house last night, I sat in Mr. LaGraves class and listened to his presentation. I have decided that I like Mr. LaGrave and while he may give a lot of homework, he specifically addressed it and said the homework is not supposed to be more than 30-45 minutes and if it is more... He wants parents to communicate to him so he can modify and adjust the homework accordingly. Connor even has his first spelling test this Friday...this is a little thing but huge compared to last year...Connor didn't get his first spelling words until November last year. And spelling tests were supposed to be weekly but were never consistent. I am looking forward to a teacher that is organized and consistent...and I feel pretty good that we have that with Mr. LaGrave. So here's to a much better school year than last year!