She’s Loving the Public-School Transit!

Malia has settled into school and now that she can actually get to all her classes without getting lost, she is feeling much more confident. One of the unexpected highlights of her school days are the bus rides to and from school. Not only does she get to talk with her friends during transit, but she really likes her bus driver. He is funny and nice and contributes to the entertainment value of her travel time. His name is Curtis and since we are Muppet fans over here, on the very first day her brain linked Curtis with Kermit the frog and she has taken to calling him Kermit.

Malia enjoys making gifts for people that she likes, so she has crafted a tiny Kermit keychain out of clay to give to her bus driver, who displays other such gifts from the kids in the front of the bus. Her mini-Kermit is even wearing a baseball cap like her bus driver. Her artistic skills always astound me as I can neither draw nor sculp, and I love that she gets such enjoyment out of sharing her talents with others!

Be True to Your School

Malia has embraced her new school and is exploring what social life looks like now that she has left elementary school behind. While she doesn’t care a whit about football, she has discovered that going to the high school football games is an opportunity to see friends. She has taken to wearing a baseball cap most of the time and now that she is one step closer to high school and knows that her entire school and all her new friends will feed to the same school, she has added a new hat to her wardrobe. Go Sentinels!

A Trial Run

This summer has been hard for Malia, very hard. Not only is the transition to middle school difficult, but the big school boundary changes a few years ago put Malia in a different middle school from all her friends, and a different one from where all her brothers attended. She has been completely stressed out and anxious all summer. In fact, the anxiety started about halfway through the last school year when they started talking about middle school schedules and doing orientations with the upcoming 7th graders. We submitted a request for a special permit so she could attend the much closer and more familiar school, but it was not approved. At this point, Malia is resigned but not necessarily happy, although some recent social drama involving many of her friends from elementary school is suddenly making going to a different school much more appealing.

Today was 7th grade day at the middle school. Malia rode the bus to school for the very first time and spent half a day walking through an abbreviated school schedule. This particular school is laid out like a checkerboard where every hall and every block in the school looks exactly the same, so navigation is tricky. We walked through the school last week and located each of her classrooms, but finding her way around is still proving problematic. I know she will figure it out over time, but she is not feeling all too confident right now.

Tomorrow she will be dumped out of the frying pan straight into the fire as all the upper grade kids join the newbies for the first official day of school. Hopefully she will make some new friends fairly quickly. She doubts herself, of course, but she is a very sociable, very welcoming person and we have seen her gather new friends around her very quickly on many occasions. I think that with some time to adjust, she will be ok. Now we just have to convince her that she will be ok. 🤞

The End of an Era and a Challenge Ahead

For the past seventeen years, I’ve had at least one child in elementary school. Over the years, my days have been filled with class parties, volunteer hours, book fairs, class programs, etc. But those days are officially over now. Today was Malia’s last day of school as a sixth grader. It was a bittersweet day for me, knowing that my youngest is growing up much faster than I’d like. It was a rough day for Malia because she is leaving a place that is familiar, safe, and loved. Because yes, she loves school. When she has sick days and can’t attend, there are frequently tears because she is missing school. As she has counted down her last days at the elementary school, those tears have become more grievous as the number has waned. The sorrow is deep as well since she and her teacher have become good friends, buddies of one mind, if you will. They both have a bit (or a lot) of humor and sarcasm in them, and her teacher has told me that often she will think something but can’t say it because she is the teacher only to have Malia give voice to the exact same sentiment. We were all extremely skeptical about this particular teacher at the beginning of the year, but she has been amazing for Malia and will be greatly missed by her now that the year is over. 

This ending is even more emotionally charged due to the fact that Malia will attend a different middle school than all her school friends. It was a boundary change that Matthew dodged by being granted a special permit to stay at our previous middle school, but Malia has not been as lucky and will have to go to a school with which none of us are familiar. I wish I could change that for her, but I can’t. All I can do is support her and help her move forward with hope, always looking for the good in a tough situation. And it is a tough one. I was in the same situation, attending a jr. high with only a small number of friends from my ward. The remainder of our elementary went to a different school, so I know what it is like to walk into seven different classrooms and find exactly zero familiar faces. 

But time marches on and we must march with it. So I shed a tear or two for the ending of a phase of my life, and Malia’s, and she shed a few as well. I suspect there will be more tears in the future, but hopefully what starts off looking like a huge challenge (like Malia’s class assignment this year) will end up being a multitude of blessings in disguise.