School thoughts - Year Two Transition

It’s that time of year again when the kids head back to school, and this year my son, Ozzie, has moved up to Year Two! I can hardly believe it. How do I have a child old enough to be in Year Two? It feels like only yesterday that I was holding him as a newborn. School is a strange concept for me, not just because I had a bit of a tough time there myself, but also because, as I’ve grown up and studied more, I’ve realised how outdated the curriculum is. It just doesn’t seem fit for purpose. However, the social elements and the 'hidden curriculum' do have their benefits. Like many parents, I often consider homeschooling. Ozzie is desperate for me to teach him at home, though I suspect that’s because he thinks he’ll be able to watch telly all day!

I love the idea of homeschooling—working to our own timetable, following his passions, using my creativity, and living through our combined imaginations. It sounds wonderful in my head, but I know, in reality, it’s not something I currently have the energy or mental space for. Perhaps one day...

Before he went back to school, Ozzie mentioned in the car that he was worried about the Year Two transition because the work would be much harder. I knew this conversation was coming—the doubts, the anxiety he would feel—and I had prepared my response. It was, "drum roll please," ‘Yes, it does seem hard and a bit scary.’ Now, this was definitely not the first thing that came to mind. I wanted to say, ‘You’ll be fine, don’t worry,’ but I’m trying hard not to downplay his worries or make them seem trivial. Amazingly, a few minutes later, he surprised me by coming up with some reassuring thoughts of his own. He said, ‘Well, I’ll probably start with Year One-level work and build up to the Year Two stuff, so I think I’ll be okay.’ I was so proud I wanted to squeal, but that would have been strange and might have spoiled the moment. Instead, I took a moment to appreciate how we’re both growing as people.

Over the next few days, we talked about these feelings a lot. Ozzie spoke about feeling excited and scared at the same time. I explained how our brains work and that these emotions actually ignite in the same area of our brain, meaning we can choose to see those feelings in a different light. (This is something I try to remind myself of when I’m nervous—maybe I’m just excited!) Amazingly, all this talking seemed to pay off because, on his first day back, he just walked in—a far cry from the last two years when 8 out of 10 times at drop-off, he would struggle to cross the threshold. School has been a journey with some significant lows (which I don’t think I’ll ever be able to talk about publicly) and some definite highs, leaving me wondering if it’s the right choice for us.

I often wish I could afford, and lived close to, a wonderful independent free school—a school that truly centres its learning around each child. We’re lucky in many ways with Ozzie’s school; it’s a state school in the countryside, and he has only seven classmates in his year and 21 in his class (mixed-year classes). The school is small, and they do help him to shine. However, he doesn’t have a wide variety of peers to mix with, and sometimes I worry whether we’re giving him enough opportunities to develop different parts of himself.

I trained in primary education, and I loved all my placements except the last one. I thrived in that world, especially supporting the children who found it hard to access the work, helping them find their way in, and creating imaginative worlds for us all to explore together. I loved the busyness of school, the constant activity, and seeing children thrive. I stopped teaching because of the paperwork and politics. I’m a sensitive soul, and I hated watching schools fail to meet the children’s needs. It was hard to see how schools were becoming a place of complete support for children, where teachers were expected to teach and act as family counsellors. There seemed to be a real lack of support for parents to understand how to help their children. I worked in schools in many deprived areas, and it was tough to watch so many families struggle and to see children on a path that would be hard to change at such a young age.

The positive side of not working now is that I have time to think all this through and be there for every school pick-up, drop-off, and assembly. I can be as involved as possible, which is wonderful. I also have the energy to deal with the after-school fallout—the emotional meltdowns that happen after keeping himself in a ‘tidy box’ all day, following social boundaries, and trying to do the right thing because a teacher ‘said so’. I’ll never forget the day a teacher came out of class and told me Ozzie had been rude because he poked his tongue out, and that I needed to have a word with him... I want him to always feel free to poke his tongue out, and if my being around more helps him keep his silly, cheeky side, then what a brilliant outcome that would be!

I have plans to work on more activities to help with the after-school emotional fallout, and I’ll pop them on this blog when I have a bit more of a list. If anyone has any suggestions they’d like to share, please do! Thats my rambleing about school, so for now, go on, sit down, take five and have a cuppa for me!

Katy x