Jesse Leaves Northstar

Yes, it's finally happened.  We had already decided that Jesse would be attending a new school after the summer but this week we decided to bring that up a bit and he will finish at Northstar today.  

Some of you will be aware of how difficult Jesse has been finding school here.  He started in the fourth grade but then we realised that this was wrong so he was transferred to a third grade class which was much better (year 4 in NZ is grade 3 here).  

Northstar's philosophy is just not in line with our philosophy for Jesse's schooling.  As you know, Jesse has been attending a Montessori school since he was 3.  He has always enjoyed it and loved school most of the time, even when there were issues with bullying, he was always pretty keen.  This last few months all that has changed.  He has been sleeping in, trying to tell me he's sick and in fact has been sick an awful lot.  We think that the stress of the situation has been getting to him.  He finally revealed to me a few weeks ago how unhappy he was and how much pressure there was to perform. The school has a different expectation of a child's learning capability than we have normally experienced from Montessori.  The latest project assigned was similar to what Jenna was working on in high school.  He worked on his homework last week for 10 hours and did not complete it.  

The new school Humberside Montessori seems to be more in line with the Montessori philosophies we are used to.  We are meeting with the Principal on Tuesday, and Jesse will be spending the day there, to try and arrange for Jesse to start earlier.  If this doesn't work, I will be home schooling him for the next 8 weeks.  Gosh never thought I'd ever say that!  Will keep you posted.

In other news, we are heading for Montreal next weekend to check it out.  Really looking forward to that and will no doubt have heaps of photos to post afterwards.