Second Grade!

      
      Wednesday was the Lone Star Baby's first day of second grade.  It was also her first day at a new school.  That may be a surprise to some, as she started a new school last year for first grade and we adored it, so allow me to explain some recent and relevant events:

    From the age of 18 months through kindergarten, the Lone Star Baby attended a Spanish-immersion Montessori school.  It was a wonderful school, but only went through kindergarten.  Also, we would not have been financially able to keep her in a private school beyond kindergarten anyway - we were without car payments during all of her daycare years except the kinder year (when we finally had to replace Lone Star Pa's car) and that allowed us to just barely afford her school.  It wasn't something we would have been able to keep up even if the school had more grades, which it did not.

      For first grade, we got the Lone Star Baby into a (free) dual-language, Montessori charter school.  (Actually, the whole school is Montessori but only the Lone Star Baby's one classroom was dual-language.)  She had a simply wonderful year.  The teacher and assistant in her class were a perfect fit for the Lone Star Baby and she truly thrived under their instruction.  By the end of first grade she was reading at level 4.5 (fourth grade, fifth month) and multiplying fractions - and best of all, she was happy and confident.  The only slightly discouraging thing was that, with mornings in English and afternoons in Spanish, Spanish time was often interrupted by other worthwhile activities like art, music and P.E.  The school was very taken with the Lone Star Baby's Spanish fluency, but we could see that she was starting to lose some of it.  Lower elementary classes in Montessori schools are mixed-age classes of first through third grades.  One of the best things about her school was that she was to have the same wonderful teachers for second and third grade also.

But...

At the end of the school year, the Lone Star Baby's teachers quit the school to start their own private Montessori school, one that would be sort of a home-schooling environment, located in a little house and having a maximum fifteen students ranging from kindergarten through the eighth grade.  One that would be about ninety-percent Spanish-speaking.  Well.  They told me to check it out and I did to be nice but I knew we couldn't afford a private school.  It was lovely, and they really wanted her there, but I knew we couldn't afford a private school.  It was a school that would allow her to hold on to her Spanish, but I knew we couldn't afford a private school.  I heard disturbing things like the charter school had replaced her teacher with a teacher who did not even speak Spanish and an assistant who did, but we still could not afford private school.  

And then...

I can't share the details, because our benefactor wishes to remain anonymous, but it turns out that she is now getting to go to the new private school with her wonderful teachers at no cost to us.  So she is going.  There are eleven kids there now and she is one of three second graders.  Several of her friends are there as well.  It is lovely.

Such blessings!