Third grade started today. I’m not freaking out so much about having an 8 year old that likes to walk home but I am freaking out about third grade as a whole.
I remember third grade. Like really remember it. I remember what our science lab looked like and the fall festival with cake walks and I remember square dancing at PE. So while I’m not trying to do too much stressing about the actual academics of third grade I am trying to make sure we don’t do too much to mess up these formative years.
Addy always always has a notebook with her and so do I but our notebooks are full of totally different things. Where I am scribbling song lyrics and tv quotes and random thoughts and things to look up later, she is drawing. She got a comic book sketch book and has been hard at work making a comic. I’m sure I was writing stories (and not finishing them) in every notebook I had. I don’t freak out about screen time (I never have). I am very lax on censorship (Brownlee is not). But we are making sure that we have trips and go to museums and need to get back into the library and I am letting her pick if she wants to do ballet or cheerleading.
I am still naive and think that third grade should basically be the same everywhere. And other (read: white) parents have moved their kids to different schools I’m insisting on keeping Addy here. The school is a block away. The principal is a black man. Her two teachers last year were black ladies and her new teacher is a black lady. The kids are brown. This is entirely different from the elementary school I went to. Some of the kids are in dual language and she’s picked up Spanish words here and there. And that’s enough for me to keep her there and do blackity black kid things.
Here’s to third grade.
Aww! I remember your third grade very clearly, too. And it doesn’t seem like it was so long ago. I’m still trying to process that Addy is in the third grade. OMG!!!!