Good morning

Good morning, the kids are off to school and I've gotten ready for work and had a little time so I thought I'd stop by.

I had a neat thing happen this morning while I was waiting for the kids school bus. After the bus pulled away I was flagged down by a vehicle that was behind the bus, so I pulled over to see what was going on. See, even though my kids are riding a bus in the morning to their new school, before they can get off at this bus stop in the afternoon, I have to speak to the family that lives at this home and approve it through them so that incase something happens and I don't get to the bus stop in time in the afternoon the kids will be ok waiting there and could come inside in case of bad weather. But my attempts to get ahold of anyone at this home haven't been successful, so I've still been picking them up in the afternoons, which I really don't mind.

Anyway, the person that flagged me down this morning was the mother of 2 kids that ride my childrens bus, but she lives actually closer to where we do than our actual bus stop at this time. She flagged me down to let me know that she sees me at the bus stop in the morning and wanted to let me know that if I would like to I can actually change my kids' bus stop to her home, that she is always there before and after school and that if I didn't happen to make it to the bus stop in the afternoons that the kids were more than welcome to come into her home to wait for me or if I needed to drop them earlier in the morning, that was fine also. We exchanged phone numbers and I thanked her very much for flagging me down.

This is something that I have noticed about many people at the new school, whether it's staff members or other parents. People are very friendly and helpful and go out of their way to make not only my children, but myself feel welcome at the new school. In all of the years my children were at TPS I didn't see alot of this. Parents weren't very warm when you were a newcomer at the school and alot of the kids were "cliquey". Even the teachers have said how cliques are not the norm at the kids new school. The Phys Ed teacher told me that in most schools, when you walk into the lunch room, you easily see the divisions into the cliques, but he has not seen that at this school. He said that during lunch and other times when the kids are together, they really intermingle with each other rather than separate into groups. Now, I do understand that this new school is a MUCH smaller school (105 in my eldests grade compared to more than 300 in the TPS school), but from going to a very small school myself, I remember how divided we were when we were at lunch period and pep rallys.

I find that my kids new school is a much warmer experience for them. I see the principal and other staff members greeting the kids with smiles and kindness when they go into the building in the morning, rather than having to yell and bark out orders to them like what happened at the TPS school. The school has an open door policy in the mornings and opens up the gymnasium more than half an hour before the school actually opens so that the kids can come inside rather than having to stand outside in the cold and inclement weather. They have things for the kids to do in the mornings when they do come in early, and teachers are there in case they need help to finish up their homework. It's a much better learning environment than what I've seen at TPS schools the past couple of years. But once again, it is also a much smaller school, so that probably has alot to do with it.

There are a few other things that I wanted to talk about, but I really need to head out to work, so I'll try to post about those tonight or over the weekend.