Your son is no longer welcome here!
“Your son is no longer welcome here.” These are the words that I heard from my
son’s pre-school teacher seven years ago.
As a parent I was quite alarmed by this opening line and immediately
went into a defensive mode. The teacher
follow-up was we don’t know what to do with your son. He should go to kindergarten next year.
Being a new parent and not knowing what to do I start
researching options that would find a place he would be welcomed. The school district and private schools in
the area would allow early entrance if they felt my son was READY. What does that mean…. READY? How is that determined?
The pre-school teacher told me that my son’s level of
social, emotional and cognitive readiness would be no problem. My son had been going to this same
pre-school for three years so I valued her professional assessment.
I visited all the local public school and meet with the
principles and teachers and they all said don’t have your son start early. The difference of professional assessments
became very frustrating.
I went back to the pre-school teacher and let her know what
I was finding. She once again told
me, “Your son is no longer welcome here
we can’t do anything else for him.” I
proceed to ask her what options do we have if the public schools won’t have
him. At the time based on my son’s
birthdate they could not prevent me from enrolling him and that is exactly what
the pre-school teacher told me. Based
on all my visits I did not feel my son would be welcomed at these schools;
especially since they all told me to wait on enrolling him.
The next option was to look at private schools. I won’t go into my view about private vs.
public schools in this blog post for is would take me to long and don’t really
want to have this debate with my wife again!
By the way she won the debate but that is also another story.
A private school was identified and I went to the tour and
everything was going great until the end of the visit. “We currently can’t accept your son at our
school but would encourage you to have him enroll next year.” At this point I am pretty frustrated and
really did not want my son to go to a private school in the first place but did
not like hearing once again “Your son is
not welcomed here!”
I went back to the pre-school teacher and told her about the
experience. She looked at me with a
very confused look and proceeded to ask me a few questions. “Did they talk to your son? Did they meet him?” When I told her no to both of her questions
I could see her getting angry. She
picked up the phone while I was in the office and called the school in question
and requested to speak with the school head master and kindergarten teacher. She set up an appointment for both the head
master and kindergarten teacher to observe my son at pre-school and requested
but really demanded to allow my son to be allowed to shadow in the current She setup kindergarten class. She
setup meetings to meet them in person.
She sent over a letter of recommendation.
I went home that evening so impressed with the fact that
someone believed in my son so much that they would go that extra mile.
After several evaluations and shadowing my son was accepted
into the school and would be starting kindergarten in the fall!
As I get questions from friends and family about the change
with youth soccer and going to birth year I reflect back to my son and his
transition from pre-school to kindergarten.
The most important thing to do is find a club and coach that
believes in your child and will be their advocate. As a parent you want what you think is best
for your child. You get the feedback
from the professionals and then make a choice that works for your child and
family.
posted by Donald W. Army at 3:14 PM
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