I was terrified when I looked at the call display and saw it was his school. I considered not answering it, knowing that no one else probably would either as the secretary had stepped out for lunch for a couple of minutes. (She almost always answers the phone and is great as anyone who’s phoned me at work can atest too!) Of course the call had to come the moment she left. With my heart pounding, I answered the phone. They, of course, asked for me and I assured them that I was indeed myself. She asked how my day was and I said that depended on what she had to tell me. She introduced herself and I quickly realized it was not Kris’ teacher. It was worse than I thought! Maybe this was the new principal! I’ve been a little sick lately and wouldn’t recognize someone’s name unless it was completely obvious. She told me that we had met several times last year to discuss Kris. If you’ll remember last year, Kris got into a tiny, tiny bit of trouble every now and then. Or every other week or so! This did not ease my fears at all! She wanted to schedule a meeting with me for next week to discuss Kris’ progress in grade 8. At least he hasn’t killed anyone, I thought to myself.
She went on to tell me how well, yes that’s right I said well, Kris is doing in grade 8. She said that he is thriving and that his work is going above and beyond classroom expectations! He really likes his teacher this year. Now you may think, as I did, that this means he has a young cute teacher but it isn’t so. He just thinks she’s really nice. Which is a huge change from last year. OMG I’m so excited and proud of him. He’s been working his ass off and the school actually realizes it. We’re meeting with them next week to set up his IPP. This stands for Individualized program plan — since he was coded as gifted several years ago, he sometimes gets extra projects and stuff that the other kids don’t. I’m so excited to see that they’re setting everything up at the beginning of the year this time instead of in May like last year which is a total waste of time. If Kris keeps up the good behavior, he might even live to see grade 9!
