The first day of homeschooling. An autistic child and a school.

Today was the first day when Alice studied in a new format of home schooling. We do not have a classic option when a teacher visits a student at home, we come to school for lessons ourselves. Ideally, Alice will still attend some lessons (physical education, music, work) with the class, but later, when she adapts. The decision to switch to home schooling was not easy, I wrote about how we came to it here, here and here.

All evening I was preparing a folder with tasks for Alice. She chose those that would help to demonstrate her knowledge, skills, and abilities as much as possible. In the morning I wrote explanations to these folders, got carried away and we were almost late. Despite the fact that lately almost every school day ended in tears for Alice, she went to school with pleasure. This time was no exception, she was happy to go to school and only checked, turning around, whether I was standing at the gate, whether I was waving goodbye to her. Now her school day starts on Monday and Tuesday at 10 am, and on Wednesday at 2 pm. A teacher met her on the porch and together they entered the building.

I just have to wait and hope that everything goes well. In the morning, I asked the teacher not to wait until Alice starts crying, because she has almost developed a reflex, she wanted to go home – sobbed – went home, and let her go until that moment, let her not sit for all three hours, this is the first day.

After the first hour, silence, no call, no screams, I’m waiting further. 1.5 hours have passed – silence. After 2 hours, the call came, they worked out, she sees that Alice is tired and wants to let her go. What pleased me was that Alice’s crying could not be heard in the background. Of course, I was in favor. After 10 minutes they went out together, Alice was in a great mood. The teacher (I don’t really like this word, I like “teacher” more, but dictionaries confirm that it exists and, in order not to repeat myself, I use it) told me in detail what she and Alice did. They took several tasks from our folder, she gave some of her tasks, told us what to pay attention to. I gave homework (somewhere I already wrote that for me this is a straight point, that if a teacher gives homework, it means he is focused on the result). She praised Alice, said that they went to class, of course, they didn’t do much, but today the goal was different — to get to know each other, to establish contact. It turns out that she already knew Alice, since she also teaches physical education classes at elementary school, but still the first days are very important for determining the style of communication, building trusting relationships.

We said goodbye warmly and went home. Already in the car, I wrote to the head teacher that Alice and I were delighted with our teacher. We have the same views on the process of development and development, she is ready to contact me and I see that she is ready to work with Alice, which makes me very happy.

Fears are gone, there is hope that we are doing everything right and we are on the right track. In the evening we did our homework and are ready for school again! This word no longer makes me feel hopeless and dull longing, so the world is full of bright colors again.

Good luck to you and your children in the educational process, let real Teachers meet on their way, there are many of them and they deserve respect, because their work is priceless.

Stay tuned and subscribe to our channel. We still have a long way to go, we will share with you both successes and difficulties, but I hope that there will be more of the first.

P.S. Be kinder in the comments. There is already a lot of evil in the world.