In summer 2015, we moved homes. It was a herculean task, but the iron was hot and the hammer struck at the right time, as all pieces came together. The first year of home ownership was rough on all of us:
- Amit handled most of the heavy lifting, literally, and LOTS of things broke in the house in the first year.
- My rotator cuff repair recovery from the surgery in spring was super slow, and a constant source of pain.
- Rian missed the old house, and was content over summer to spend part of it in India. When school started and we moved him over to a public school. He got a nanny to take care of his after-school time.
Rian did very well with the transition. There were hiccups, but he continued to be a happy boy on most days. The level of academics was a 2 year setback for Rian, but he adapted to more independence, free thoughts, a new way of learning in public school classrooms with much less structure and discipline. This is supposed to be "good" for kids long-term, so we stuck with it. With the nanny, we added back tennis classes, soccer classes, and Rian started doing "catch up Math" every day at home, along with "catch up vocabulary". There was no science fair, but kids did some hands-on "STEM projects" initially and Rian was all excited.
Cut to third grade, and I realized having "no standard" in public schools means the teacher chooses how much she can manage to do, in addition to the core curriculum. Rian's teacher was new to the school district, and it was her first year. There were no STEM projects (at least Rian never shared), no emails from the teacher about what happened every week, and Rian started "getting in trouble" consistently. He would complain he's "bored" in class all the time. Teacher caught him reading a book under his desk. He continued to have comics and story books under his desk all the time :-) Perhaps the teacher was trying to teach him self-restraint, but Rian is not mature enough to learn that, and his greatest gravitation is towards books! He continued to read under his desk, leading to more and more "boredom" in what the teacher says - that happens when you pay half the attention you are supposed to. At the parent-teacher conference, we shared with the teacher that he does Math at higher levels at home, and it would be good to challenge him. She had tools that she showed us, but Rian would have to do his "regular" Math, and only after that would he be given the "challenging" Math. Rian does not like writing, and he never managed to finish his "regular" Math on time in the class, as he found it -- you guessed it -- "too boring"!
Then in September, our nanny left. Dad passed away. We hired a new nanny who promised to stay through Rian's third grade. Huge change for Rian, as the new nanny was stricter, but also played sports with Rian. We discontinued Rian's classes for tennis and soccer, so the nanny could have more time teaching Rian 1-on-1. It turns out, there was very little of the sports stuff going on :-( and we found out after the nanny left -- yes -- broke up with us over a text message --
while we were on vacation in December!
We recovered from this, and enrolled Rian for the short term in a day care. The idea was to find a third nanny. Three weeks in, and we had one candidate who could only stay till the end of June. Which meant finding another nanny for fourth grade, setting expectations again, communicating daily schedules and lesson plans every day. I also noticed with both nannies that they totally depended on me to "tell" them every day what to do with Rian. My expectation was after 2-3 weeks of knowing (from me) what to do, they would set their own schedules with Rian - but no such magic happened. Retraining new nannies is definitely a lot of work.
Within a month of third grade starting, the teacher announced she was expecting a baby due end of January. The new teacher that was assigned to their class (and had already started substituting), had never been a teacher in formal capacity before - first time!
We also started noticing Rian's lack of interest in reading anything academic or learning anything. The kid used to have a thirst for knowledge which seemed to have disappeared. Perhaps being driven by nannies rather than his parents also had played a hand - we all know delegating is easier, but quality is always different. We made the decision to go back to the old formula that worked: private school.
This is another change Rian handled really really well. I started this post with that end goal in mind. To acknowledge how well this kid has responded to changes. He's had a school change every 2 years:
- Pre-school and pre-K (1.5 yrs) at Champion School
- Kindergarten and 1st grade (2 yrs) at Stratford - Sunnyvale at Washington Park
- 2nd grade and half of 3rd grade (1.5 yrs) at public school - Cupertino School District - Stevens Creek Elementary School
- 3rd grade onwards at Stratford - Sunnyvale at De Anza Park
We are very thankful to Rian for being such a wonderful kid, and adapting to changes in his friend circle every so often. We are also lucky our "friends circle" has been enriched with every school change Rian has had. We are 2 days into the new school, and keeping fingers crossed and thoughts positive.
We love you Rian!
