Thursday, May 7, 2009

Fourth Grade

Thirteen years of school is a lot to get through! 4th grade marks a shift in the elementary school focus - class sizes get much larger - and it also marked a shift in where Holly went to school.

The Open Classroom program at Conejo Elementary was a great program and one that really helped the Schnoogs to come out of her shell. In fact, she got soooo comfortable with the program and had the same teacher for 3 years, that she got a little ahead of herself. When I learned that she was deciding when she would or would not do projects in class near the end of 3rd grade, David and I made the tough decision to shift things over to a mainstream public school and make things a bit tougher for the young Schnoogs, who seemed to have everything dialed in.

Welcome to ParkOaks Elementary and the very tough-teaching tactics of Mr. Hedin!! Life was different here, but in a good way...even Holly admits it. Mr. Hedin (I referred to him as Doug-E because his first name was Doug and he had something of a scary-if-you-crossed-him but cool surfer vibe going on) was a stern disciplinarian and expected a lot from his students...there was no opting in or out of assignments here!

Life is full of change, even the young Schnoogs could attest to that!

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