Middle School Back to School Night...

It was back to school night at Sierra Middle School! Chris and I went and met all of Emma's 8th grade teachers. I think all in all, she did pretty well this year!! She has the same Spanish teacher as last year. I am thrilled about that. Emma can understand a lot of spanish and can speak pretty well. They gave some sort of assessment and Emma scored an 83%. I am happy with that. She loves the Spanish language and still wants to go to Costa Rica and study this summer...

Next was Electronic Publishing. Wow, that teacher LOVES the kids and LOVES what he does. No wonder Emma LOVES his class. She is applying to be editor of the paper. Keep your fingers crossed as this would look excellent on the high school application we are working on.

Next was PE. That teacher was out, however, I know him, great teacher and last year he told everyone of in the office that Emma was going to be one of the top 2 achievers from all of his classes. Great judge of character. I played with my phone and Chris looked up baseball scores during this period. We joked with the principals that we were "skipping gym".

Next, American History. That looks like a fun class. The announcement was made that the Owl team was going on a field trip next Friday. All four core classroom teachers will take part in this. We discussed what the class consists of and I really liked this teacher. Hope she is willing to give Emma some of the harder work she offers. We will see.

From there we headed to English. I liked this teacher. She was the one that noticed that Emma was reading ahead and sent her to the library for the unabridged version of the book to read. She stated that Emma is a fabulous reader but needs to slow down with her writing and be sure what was being asked of her. I love her for not squelching Emma's reading like most do, now if she can make the writing assignments interesting...

Science. I think this is Emma's favorite subject. I loved it when he said that asking kids to memorize what order the planets are in is stupid. They can google that. But let's talk about why they are lined up the way they are, their shape and size and placement in the solar system and how that will affect future space travel... He talked about teaching kids to think like scientist. Teaching kids how to think...

Math was next. He had a cool board! He was younger than I pictured. Emma was most worried about having this teacher, but in fact, is really enjoying him. We talked about math placement for High School, and college math requirements. (yep, 3rd week 8th grade)

What we heard from everyone is that they like our Emma and that she is doing really well this year. No late assignments, doing good work. We are proud...