Score one for Mom! Well, actually, Score one for Silly!

Okay, here's a school story. Now before I start, let me say that my kids have had wonderful teachers. And I think the teacher Silly has this year is wonderful as well. I just tell this story because I'm so proud of myself. You have to know how easy going and non-confrontational I am to realize why.

So a little background: Silly has always struggled a little with reading. He does a good job in everything else at school but he just has had a harder time with reading for some reason. We've been working on it at home and he's improved a lot. So Monday his class took the test to determine their "lexile", which is their reading level. He came home that afternoon almost in tears saying that his lexile was 200, (which is a 1st grade level and he's in 4th grade) and that his teacher said he could only check out books from the library on his lexile level. He kept saying what a bad reader he was -- which really isn't the case at all. So I got on the lexile website and the books on his supposed level were like "The Berenstein Bears" and these really simple, easy 1st grade books. Totally ridiculous because he's read tons of books way above that level. So I whipped out his paper with his lexile level from last year and it was 510 (which fit well within a 3rd grade level). Then I ranted to Mighty M about it for a bit and decided to call his teacher and talk to her about it.

So yesterday I called her and told her that I thought 200 was way low for him. After a few minutes of talking to her she said she'd bump it up to 400 (2nd grade level), but she really wanted him to read at the level that he had scored. I was all, "But I'm his mom and I know he can read at a higher level than "Berenstein Bears"." Okay, I didn't really say it quite like that (as I did in my head)--I just said that I'd been working with him and I had a degree in and now work with speech/language disabilities and didn't feel like it reflected his reading performance.

Then she said that she really just had to go by the scores of his test. So I told her that Silly had said that he had been really distracted while he was doing the test because there were so many other things going on in the room at the time and maybe he could take the test again with less distractions. So she said she'd have him do that. Today he took the test again and when I got home there was a message from his teacher saying that his lexile level was over 1000 (which is 6th-7th grade level) (!!!).

Oh, you can totally imagine the smug smile on my face. :) But it was a politely smug smile because I really do like his teacher. But just how happy it made Silly and the new confidence I could see in him was awesome. I've actually caught him playing the message from his teacher again a few times with a really proud smile on his face.

Way to go, Silly!

And thank you, Silly's teacher, for listening to me.