(no subject)

We are having some drama and chaos surrounding Sophie's schooling (she's about to start 3rd grade), and I wondered how much of the backstory I ever put here. It turns out the answer is "none" - the last time I wrote was near the end of kindergarten. Oh the foreshadowing.

"They told us of their concern that she was not ready to cope with a classroom where the kids are sitting at desks and doing what the teacher asks them to all day long. Happily for everyone, the nightmare scenario of being constantly summoned to school about our uncontrollable problem child, in those circumstances, had already occurred to us, and we were able to get her into the one mixed-age (grades 1-4) Montessori-style classroom at the local public school."

Well, that went poorly. Like, "they summoned us within 10 days of the start of term" poorly. Like, "they refused to talk to her previous teachers at all" poorly. Like, "they kicked her out of the class and sent her back to kindergarten level" poorly. Like, "the kindergarten teacher was at a loss what to do with her because she didn't belong in kindergarten" poorly. Like, "the director was actively hostile to her and us" poorly.

As part of this saga, we got her tested, and she pretty clearly fit the profile for ADHD. It turns out that Austrian schools are not, in general, equipped for handling ADHD kids - especially in the first grade, their reaction to more or less any challenge that a child has is to boot them back to kindergarten for an extra year. (As a corollary, I think if I ever hear the sentence "Wir verschenken dem Kind ein Jahr Kindheit" ever again, I might punch the speaker.) We've also since found, after extra testing recommended by her teacher, that in her case as in so many, dyslexia goes hand in hand with the ADHD. I also suspect we could get a diagnosis of dyscalculia, but despite all the labels it's basically the same thing - she is racing so fast through trying to get DONE with what she is doing that she doesn't notice the step (letters, sum, etc.) that she is currently supposed to be focusing on.

Fortunately the school director's hostility meant that, when we found her a spot in a different (also mixed-age) class in a different (private, Lutheran) school whose director is sympathetic to challenging children like her, the director of the old school gave us the deregistration form without even bothering to ask any questions. Despite, at the age of 7, not having been taught anything whatsoever for the previous year and a half, she managed to get through the first-grade curriculum in half a year, enough to catch up to where she was supposed to be by the end of the year. Also she has thoroughly charmed the director of the new school, who is completely on her side and convinced she will do great things.

Unfortunately, her class has not had the stability that one might hope. They've lost a teacher every year for the last four years, and at the end of this past year they lost not only the class teacher (who seems to have decided that she doesn't believe in mixed-age classes after all) but also the long-serving assistant teacher. They were pretty clearly just phoning it in by the end of the year, and then in the last few days of school the afterschool teacher was involuntarily dispatched to early retirement and we're not sure why. Add to that that the director - the one person there who I know to be on her side - went on sudden sick leave in March for the rest of the school year, and things were looking grim.

Then they got grimmer - although we had discussed the possibility of moving Sophie to the regular (single-grade) class this year, the director had said at the time there was no space. After she was gone I took the issue up again with her substitute, who told me that another mother - in fact the mother of Sophie's best friend and the only other girl in the upcoming 3rd/4th grades - had asked first (in fact, she hadn't, but she asked *the substitute* first) and so if any space came available it would go to her. Then we heard that the best friend was indeed leaving the class, which would leave Sophie isolated in a class with a bunch of older boys who like to gang up on her every now and then, without any girls her age, and without particularly good friends among the three younger girls. Add to this the fact that the new teacher really is *new*, i.e. just finished her qualification (through, let's not forget, the Austrian system that doesn't equip its teachers to deal with any sort of neuro-divergence) and we've been just about ready to get her out of there, but we haven't been able to do anything since no one in elementary education in Austria is reachable during the summer months.

But the city office responsible for school registration opened back up yesterday, and so now we know there are options. One option that I would be, by turns, enthusiastic and apprehensive about, is the bilingual public school up the road. On the one hand Sophie knows kids there, including the boy who lives upstairs and would be in the same class, and she would be quite happy to be taught in English; on the other hand I constantly hear about how it is a traditional school with a traditional mindset, and I wonder if we would be back to square one. (And yet, maybe she's got that bit more maturity that means she could handle doing what she's told with less trouble.)

So I wrote an email to her current school, and much to my astonishment the school director (the sick one, the one I like, the one about whom I'd heard rumors that she wouldn't be coming back from sick leave) replied with her own astonishment, since as far as she knew no space ever became available in the regular class and so she wondered why I thought Sophie's friend was moving there. So I filled her in, and she is looking into the matter because clearly a massive error of communication has happened somewhere. And so, with a bit less than two weeks to go before the new school year starts, we're back to waiting and wondering what we'll do.