Seeing Through Lynk's Eyes: Parent Teacher Conferences!

McBride Elementary

Before I get to Lynk's parent/teacher conference, I wanted to let people know a little bit about McBride Elementary. It is a 21st Century school, and this is the first year it's been open, as they just finished building it a few months ago. A 21st century school is different than normal schools, both in layout and teaching strategies.

21st Century schools focus on collaboration, creativity, critical thinking, and digital literacy. They strive to teach children how to thrive in a digital age, as well as how to be effective problem-solvers. The school integrates a lot of technology into the classrooms as well. The layout of the school is designed to foster collaboration between students and teachers. Instead of having individual classrooms, each grade is in it's own pod, called a neighborhood. There is a central open area, where students have centers, rug time, etc.

Pre-School Neighborhood

The neighborhood is then divided up into what looks like large cubicles, one class per cubicle. This is where children receive instruction from their main teacher, who is called their homework teacher. But in reality, all 5 first grade teachers work to teach all of the students. Lynk does reading with Ms. Smith, even though his homework teacher is Ms. Ramos. There are 110 first grade students. The way the school is set up, it's almost like one giant classroom of 110 students with 5 teachers. It really seems to work well, because McBride has been named one of 2016's Blue Ribbon Schools for academic excellence!

Entrance to First Grade Neighborhood

Each neighborhood has it's own color coded entrance. The first grade entrance is yellow. The Pre-K entrance (where Myck does Speech) is purple. Each neighborhood comes equipped with an office, as well as a one-on-one room. These rooms have glass walls, so anyone can see inside. It's where student's go when they have speech, need one-on-one instruction, or where teachers can take students to do reading evaluations. It's a really cool setup.

Entrance to Pre-K Neighborhood

School has been somewhat tumultuous this year, as Lynk still doesn't have a permanent teacher. From what the school has put out, there is a permanent teacher who will be here...sometime. For now, the school has been hiring long-term subs to fill in until the full-time teacher gets there. Lynk's class is now on their 2nd long-term sub. His current teacher is Ms. Ramos. And yesterday, Lynk and I got to sit and chat with her a bit about how Lynk is doing in school.

Lynk is meeting expectations in all subjects! His reading is phenomenal. They base reading scores off of something called BAS - it's an alpha based scale (A being lowest) that helps teachers determine what level kids are reading at. When first graders begin the year, they normally read at a C-D level, and at the end of the year, they expect students to be reading up at a J level. Lynk is already reading at the H level, only 2 levels away from where first graders are supposed to end the year at.

Smart Boards in every classroom and neighborhood

He is doing well in all other areas, with his weakest area being writing. We believe this is partly because of low vision. He has a hard time seeing what he's writing. He can't judge spacing well, and he can't tell if he's fully erased a letter or not. But he is getting better. We are working with some trial-and error techniques to help Lynk improve his handwriting, including simply crossing out a word instead of trying to erase it, and possibly using bigger erasers. He was able to show me his slant board at school, as well as his wide-ruled writing pages. (He has special wider-than-normal ruled pages because he has to write large enough to be able to see it, and his large writing doesn't fit on the writing pages the other kids use).

Overall, Lynk's conference went really, really well. Ms. Ramos even said that if she hadn't been told that Lynk had vision issues, she'd never have guessed, because he does so well with everything. The biggest giveaways are the fact that he does need the slant board and large print, and he uses a magnifying glass to read.

He will probably end up with different visual aids once we see the low vision doctor, which will hopefully be sooner than January. At least we have an appointment with her!! Oh, and real quick, there is one additional medical update - I had emailed Lynk's pediatrician to let her know that Dr. Jain wants us to see if we can't get genetic testing done. So Dr. Brown put in a referral for a geneticist! We will see what happens once insurance receives the referral!