Ariel visited us yesterday. We made sausage and eggs and pancakes, and afterwards went on a walk around the academy. Jackson showed Ariel his campus and later she and he walked and talked ahead of Cyndi, Rylee and me. I overheard snippets: Ariel had questions about his classes; Jackson asked her about what she did. Unfortunately, Jack's soccer game was cancelled. It wasn't due to the weather. I'm afraid the league's season is off to a shaky start, especially with a week postponed, a week cancelled, and uniforms on back order. The most unfortunate thing was Ariel didn't get to see him play. I hope the soccer season doesn't lose momentum. It looked like Jack would have a good season.
Jackson told me about his art class before and this morning I saw his work online, with his teacher's comments attached. Wow, it was really good. He called it contour drawing. The composition was two plants. There were different weights of lines, and they paid attention to "negative space."
The academy sends out weekly reports of what they are doing and what is coming, so I do know something of what he's doing. Right now he's studying upstairs, in between "breaks" on his computer. Sunday appears to be his heaviest day for homework. Rylee is outside, playing baseball in the yard with his friends. I think it's the fourth game of their World Series. Cyndi is taking a CPR class. I'm cooking a pot roast, and I'll go pick up Ariel in about an hour. She leaves on a red-eye tonight back to NYC.
Rylee had two games this weekend. Friday's ended up under the lights on the major field. His friend, Nathaniel came along, and it was cold. Many people showed up to see Rylee's game late on Saturday afternoon: Ariel, Jackson, Cyndi, and me; Cyndi's sisters; and Nico and his parents, our neighbors. Rylee pitched the first two innings, got himself into a jam a couple of times, walked a few on full counts, threw several fast, unhittable pitches over the plate and very few wild pitches. He had an enthusiastic section in the stands rooting for him. I kept worrying he would get tired. At one point, he and the catcher had a talk on the mound, without the coach. I wondered what that was about, and he later told me Scott, the catcher, was giving him the signals for a fastball and a change-up. The next pitch was a strike. With bases loaded at the end of the other team's at-bat in the second and a full count, Ry threw one right down the middle. The batter smacked it right back at Ry. Ry reached up and snagged the line drive and the inning was over. Ry's team was ahead and they stayed ahead for the remainder of the game.
Ariel got to watch Ry play catcher in the third, hit a single through the gap into left field, and even play second before the game was called in the fourth at sunset.
On Thursday morning, Ry was off school. He and I rode our bikes to the balloon fiesta before dawn. From the bicycle trailhead in Journal Center to the free bike valet near the balloon fiesta museum was about two miles. We outfitted our bikes with lights, including a fllashing strobe light on the back of Ry's. It was the morning for special shapes balloons. Although the winds on the ground were calm, the pilots said the winds were blowing over 19 knots at 400 feet. Many of the special shapes inflated, but none launched. Ry had a great time collecting the balloon trading cards.
Total cost: $8 for an adult entry, $3 for a tall hot chocolate with whipped cream, and a token donation in the bike valet jar. Total time in a line: zero. Total fun: immeasurable.
Showing posts with label academy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label academy. Show all posts
Sunday, October 13, 2013
Wednesday, October 9, 2013
Coming Home
I have returned from Raton. The circumstances are very strange, and it has created a hardship for us. That story I'll save for another time and place. Meanwhile, an update from home is long overdue and I don't want to go any longer without one.
Fall is coming. The balloons are in the air this week. The mornings are cold but the days are mild and sunny. The cottonwood is not changing color yet but it won't be long. Ariel is in town for a story and a visit and maybe some games this weekend. Jackson began school at the Academy and is playing soccer. Rylee is in third grade at Dennis Chavez and is playing baseball.
Jack enjoys his new school. At first, he was a bit overwhelmed but he seems to have found a rhythm now that he has his supplies and books and understands the system. There's no set daily schedule for the entire semester; rather, a weekly schedule is posted ahead on a board in the common area and online. The sixth graders are divided into pods, families, and clusters. There are two pods of sixth graders, each with half the class. Each pod has its own group of teachers, for the most part, so the kids in that pod share the same teachers and the same subject matter, though not necessarily the same classes, and share assignments and common group projects, such as the "experiential education" hike Jack's pod is taking this week, a kind of outward bound program, which will include an overnight later in the year. The smallest unit is a cluster, and these are combined in a variety of ways to make up the classes. The family is the group of kids that went through orientation together, have lockers near each other, meet daily, I think, for a kind of "home room", and eat together every day with the same teacher in the dining hall.
Bunty is his companion in his bedroom. Bunty is what he calls Limes, the rabbit, who chews through all the charging cords she can find. Exactly, it's Ry's pet but Cyndi and Jack are in love with her. Often it roams freely around the room, and even though Jackson is concentrating on his computer, the two of them must enjoy each other's company.
Jackson still spends much of his time after school on his computer, but he's also pretty diligent about getting his homework done. It may take some prompting from Cyndi and me, but there's little complaint from him as he eventually settles down somewhere and opens his notebooks. At night he comes into my room to practice his flute. His tone is improving. He still does not know enough notes to complete a scale, but his class has a repertoire of tunes using a limited number of notes. He is breezing through math and last I heard he had looked into joining the math club. Once in a while, he mentions something he learned in science (the metric system and lab safety) or history (the electoral college and the Constitution). In English, they are reading Greek myths. He first came home practicing the Spanish he learned by walking up to me one evening, shaking my hand, and saying, "mucho gusto," with a confident pronunciation. His Spanish teacher uses only Spanish in class. He's also been going to a drama club, and talked about an exercise they first did, a dialogue of sorts, comprised only of improvised questions. I have not heard much about P.E. He has talked about the drawing projects he's been doing in his art class. There's also a music class, in addition to the requirement to take a performing art--he's in the cadet band--and a "tech app" class, I think, rounds out the curriculum this year.
Jack's first soccer game was this past Saturday. He plays on the Chelsea team, and they played his team from last year, Germany. Jack's coach has taught the kids many basic skills and plays, and Jack seems to have caught on, exhibiting some great footwork and passing. He looks to be a good tackler. While he never exhibits the exuberance for sports as Ry does, still, it's astonishing to see how good he is when he does play and how much fun he has. It's great to see him running, his head in the game, with his teammates, both boys and girls, his age and a bit older. Jack is really shooting up in height, very lean, and it's fun to see him whenever he's energized.
Jackson has been determined to build a computer, and while he has set his birthday money aside for parts, we must wait a bit more for our contribution to all the parts he needs. He's told everyone at school, however, that he is going to build one. So when the school needed a student to represent it in a new online admissions "brochure" for prospective applicants, they thought of Jackson and his motivation to build his computer. Last week, some people from Baltimore came to our house, after shooting other scenes and other children, to film and photograph Jackson in his room, doing computer stuff.
Rylee, meanwhile, has a new teacher he likes. His friend from preschool and church, Eddy, is in his class. Ry's class was studying the Constitution a few weeks back. His teacher said anyone who memorized the preamble would get a special surprise.
Ry came home and said he wanted to do it. He and I worked on it that night until he had it. I told him when I dropped him off to be sure to volunteer to say it. He did. He was the only one prepared to do it. I don't think his teacher thought anyone would do it the next day. He said he was very nervous, but when he went to gifted and told his teacher there, he wasn't nervous because the class was smaller, and said it perfectly when the teacher asked. The next day he told the original teacher he wanted to do it again and he did it perfectly. Eventually, over the week, most of the other kids did it, too.
Ry is scoring high on math and spelling. He just campaigned for class president with his running mate, Enrique, Eddy's neighbor. He is already starting projects ahead of time for his gifted class, and he's already started his book report due at the end of the month. He's always eager for school.
Rylee is crazy about baseball. He's playing minors fall ball. He's amazingly good. Since fall ball is a training season, the coach is very good about rotating positions. Everyone gets outfield at some point; everyone has an inning on the bench. Rylee still manages to get some key positions. He's certain to play first, as he is such an outstanding fielder. He has a glove just for first base. Last game, two pop-ups came his way in the same inning, one fair and the other foul, and he just gets under them or chases them down and makes the catch look matter-of-fact. And for the first 5-3 out of the season, the third baseman fielded a good grounder, fired it to Ry on first, Rylee had to stretch, the throw was in the dirt, but the catch was made just before the batter reached the bag. Some real baseball.
The boys on his team range from about his age to a couple years older. Ry's probably the second youngest and second shortest, so that makes it even more fun to see him hold more than his own. (The youngest and shortest, by the way, is equally fun to watch.) I asked Ry how he felt after catching the pop-ups. He said his heart was beating fast. Ry has pitched several innings. Like Jackson, his pitches are right over the plate. After a while, however, he looks like he's tiring. He gets anxious when he's pitching, concentrating to get the throw over the plate, but he doesn't show it. Last game, he also brought his catching gear and played catcher for an inning. He also line-drived one over the shortstop's head. (He had the no. 4 position in the batting order that day.) He rounded first, deciding to go for two. The ball wasn't too far from second, however, and he had to dive headfirst, his right hand touching the bag just as the second baseman caught the ball but before the tag.
Ry studies the game. He reads the rule book. He's learning how to score a game. He watches videos on pitching grips. He's studied the cutter of his favorite pitcher, Mariano Rivera, who happens to play for Ry's favorite team (until he retired at the end of this season). He looks up stats and histories in a baseball almanac and at his school's book fair he bought a book of the "50 best" current MLB players. He studies their rosters; he follows the standings; he even follows the minor leagues. He's following the playoffs, even though his favorite team didn't make the cut. He wears their cap everywhere, including school. He collects, and even trades, baseball cards. He must have thousands now, past and present; he reads the cards; he knows the player's names, their position, the teams they played on. Sometimes, even their stats. He collects cards in binders. Right now, he's working on a binder of the teams and players who will spring train in Arizona: The Cactus League. He's determined to go next Spring, watch them play and get autographs. Every day after school, he's playing a ball game in our yard with the boys around the neighborhood. We have some rubber plates and bases. The lawn around home plate has worn to bare dirt. The mums, which are blooming now, are sadly trampled, too. If the ball reaches the street, that's an out-of-park homerun. This Sunday was the third game of a neighborhood World Series, comprised of two-person teams and played with a tennis ball. His team finally won a game. He came in at dark, ate some dinner Cyndi had made, and then came upstairs to watch some Disney show on Netflix with a bowl of apple crisp Cyndi also had made, while figuring out his team's batting averages, and said he wished every day was like today. It was a perfect day.
By the way, he even has a book that will tell him the market value of the baseball cards. He loves reminding me that a Honus Wagner baseball card sold for $2.1 million.
While he has other aspirations, one goal he has is to play high school baseball for the Albuquerque Academy Chargers, college ball with the UNM Lobos, then minors with the Vermont Lake Monsters and the Albuquerque Isotopes, then move up to the majors and get traded to his favorite team.
Fall is coming. The balloons are in the air this week. The mornings are cold but the days are mild and sunny. The cottonwood is not changing color yet but it won't be long. Ariel is in town for a story and a visit and maybe some games this weekend. Jackson began school at the Academy and is playing soccer. Rylee is in third grade at Dennis Chavez and is playing baseball.
Jack enjoys his new school. At first, he was a bit overwhelmed but he seems to have found a rhythm now that he has his supplies and books and understands the system. There's no set daily schedule for the entire semester; rather, a weekly schedule is posted ahead on a board in the common area and online. The sixth graders are divided into pods, families, and clusters. There are two pods of sixth graders, each with half the class. Each pod has its own group of teachers, for the most part, so the kids in that pod share the same teachers and the same subject matter, though not necessarily the same classes, and share assignments and common group projects, such as the "experiential education" hike Jack's pod is taking this week, a kind of outward bound program, which will include an overnight later in the year. The smallest unit is a cluster, and these are combined in a variety of ways to make up the classes. The family is the group of kids that went through orientation together, have lockers near each other, meet daily, I think, for a kind of "home room", and eat together every day with the same teacher in the dining hall.
Bunty is his companion in his bedroom. Bunty is what he calls Limes, the rabbit, who chews through all the charging cords she can find. Exactly, it's Ry's pet but Cyndi and Jack are in love with her. Often it roams freely around the room, and even though Jackson is concentrating on his computer, the two of them must enjoy each other's company.
Jackson still spends much of his time after school on his computer, but he's also pretty diligent about getting his homework done. It may take some prompting from Cyndi and me, but there's little complaint from him as he eventually settles down somewhere and opens his notebooks. At night he comes into my room to practice his flute. His tone is improving. He still does not know enough notes to complete a scale, but his class has a repertoire of tunes using a limited number of notes. He is breezing through math and last I heard he had looked into joining the math club. Once in a while, he mentions something he learned in science (the metric system and lab safety) or history (the electoral college and the Constitution). In English, they are reading Greek myths. He first came home practicing the Spanish he learned by walking up to me one evening, shaking my hand, and saying, "mucho gusto," with a confident pronunciation. His Spanish teacher uses only Spanish in class. He's also been going to a drama club, and talked about an exercise they first did, a dialogue of sorts, comprised only of improvised questions. I have not heard much about P.E. He has talked about the drawing projects he's been doing in his art class. There's also a music class, in addition to the requirement to take a performing art--he's in the cadet band--and a "tech app" class, I think, rounds out the curriculum this year.
Jack's first soccer game was this past Saturday. He plays on the Chelsea team, and they played his team from last year, Germany. Jack's coach has taught the kids many basic skills and plays, and Jack seems to have caught on, exhibiting some great footwork and passing. He looks to be a good tackler. While he never exhibits the exuberance for sports as Ry does, still, it's astonishing to see how good he is when he does play and how much fun he has. It's great to see him running, his head in the game, with his teammates, both boys and girls, his age and a bit older. Jack is really shooting up in height, very lean, and it's fun to see him whenever he's energized.
Jackson has been determined to build a computer, and while he has set his birthday money aside for parts, we must wait a bit more for our contribution to all the parts he needs. He's told everyone at school, however, that he is going to build one. So when the school needed a student to represent it in a new online admissions "brochure" for prospective applicants, they thought of Jackson and his motivation to build his computer. Last week, some people from Baltimore came to our house, after shooting other scenes and other children, to film and photograph Jackson in his room, doing computer stuff.
Rylee, meanwhile, has a new teacher he likes. His friend from preschool and church, Eddy, is in his class. Ry's class was studying the Constitution a few weeks back. His teacher said anyone who memorized the preamble would get a special surprise.
We the People of
the United States,
in Order to form a more perfect Union,
in Order to form a more perfect Union,
establish
Justice,
insure domestic Tranquility,
insure domestic Tranquility,
provide for the common defence,
promote the general Welfare,
promote the general Welfare,
and secure the Blessings of Liberty
to ourselves and our Posterity,
to ourselves and our Posterity,
do ordain and establish this Constitution
for the United States of America.
for the United States of America.
Ry is scoring high on math and spelling. He just campaigned for class president with his running mate, Enrique, Eddy's neighbor. He is already starting projects ahead of time for his gifted class, and he's already started his book report due at the end of the month. He's always eager for school.
Rylee is crazy about baseball. He's playing minors fall ball. He's amazingly good. Since fall ball is a training season, the coach is very good about rotating positions. Everyone gets outfield at some point; everyone has an inning on the bench. Rylee still manages to get some key positions. He's certain to play first, as he is such an outstanding fielder. He has a glove just for first base. Last game, two pop-ups came his way in the same inning, one fair and the other foul, and he just gets under them or chases them down and makes the catch look matter-of-fact. And for the first 5-3 out of the season, the third baseman fielded a good grounder, fired it to Ry on first, Rylee had to stretch, the throw was in the dirt, but the catch was made just before the batter reached the bag. Some real baseball.
The boys on his team range from about his age to a couple years older. Ry's probably the second youngest and second shortest, so that makes it even more fun to see him hold more than his own. (The youngest and shortest, by the way, is equally fun to watch.) I asked Ry how he felt after catching the pop-ups. He said his heart was beating fast. Ry has pitched several innings. Like Jackson, his pitches are right over the plate. After a while, however, he looks like he's tiring. He gets anxious when he's pitching, concentrating to get the throw over the plate, but he doesn't show it. Last game, he also brought his catching gear and played catcher for an inning. He also line-drived one over the shortstop's head. (He had the no. 4 position in the batting order that day.) He rounded first, deciding to go for two. The ball wasn't too far from second, however, and he had to dive headfirst, his right hand touching the bag just as the second baseman caught the ball but before the tag.
Ry studies the game. He reads the rule book. He's learning how to score a game. He watches videos on pitching grips. He's studied the cutter of his favorite pitcher, Mariano Rivera, who happens to play for Ry's favorite team (until he retired at the end of this season). He looks up stats and histories in a baseball almanac and at his school's book fair he bought a book of the "50 best" current MLB players. He studies their rosters; he follows the standings; he even follows the minor leagues. He's following the playoffs, even though his favorite team didn't make the cut. He wears their cap everywhere, including school. He collects, and even trades, baseball cards. He must have thousands now, past and present; he reads the cards; he knows the player's names, their position, the teams they played on. Sometimes, even their stats. He collects cards in binders. Right now, he's working on a binder of the teams and players who will spring train in Arizona: The Cactus League. He's determined to go next Spring, watch them play and get autographs. Every day after school, he's playing a ball game in our yard with the boys around the neighborhood. We have some rubber plates and bases. The lawn around home plate has worn to bare dirt. The mums, which are blooming now, are sadly trampled, too. If the ball reaches the street, that's an out-of-park homerun. This Sunday was the third game of a neighborhood World Series, comprised of two-person teams and played with a tennis ball. His team finally won a game. He came in at dark, ate some dinner Cyndi had made, and then came upstairs to watch some Disney show on Netflix with a bowl of apple crisp Cyndi also had made, while figuring out his team's batting averages, and said he wished every day was like today. It was a perfect day.
By the way, he even has a book that will tell him the market value of the baseball cards. He loves reminding me that a Honus Wagner baseball card sold for $2.1 million.
While he has other aspirations, one goal he has is to play high school baseball for the Albuquerque Academy Chargers, college ball with the UNM Lobos, then minors with the Vermont Lake Monsters and the Albuquerque Isotopes, then move up to the majors and get traded to his favorite team.
Monday, April 8, 2013
the knighting
Jackson, Rylee, Cyndi and I went to the academy Sunday. It's about a mile away. There's a bike path off the street behind our house that goes to the acreage and another one that goes to its gate. We drove and parked at the lower campus. Inside the west gymnasium, next door to the natatorium, Amy, who interviewed Jackson, greeted him. He shook her hand and we got our name tags downstairs. There they had an assembly of the newly admitted sixth grade students, the Class of 2020, and their families. Judy, the admissions director, welcomed us. This is her last year. The head master spoke. He talked about books that have a map inside the front cover. These, he said, were fantastical maps to a future adventure and the home on the map of their adventure was the academy. A senior spoke about her time at the academy and she and the head master asked the new admittees to stand up. These are your classmates, they said, asking the students to look around, and your friends for the next seven years. A knight's armor stood on the makeshift stage, and the senior passed a sword overhead, welcoming the children to the Chargers. The 6th grade department head, a Spanish teacher, began by reading a passage from a book in a choose-your-own-adventure series and introduced the teachers. An a capella chorus sang a song with lyrics written for the event. There was such pride in the parents. I spoke to one woman. She said her children went here, and now her grandchildren. Jackson knew a good handful of the kids already, and we knew some of the parents.
We walked first to the far side of the lower campus to the visual arts building. The art room was filled with student drawings, paintings, and sculpture. Three sixth grade students were printing the frontispieces for their portfolios on a printing press. The art teacher told us about filmmaking opportunities in the future and an artist in residence program next year. We then walked to another building which had two wings: a technical applications wing and a performing arts space. We met a drama teacher and he filled us in on some of the choices. As I recall there were dramatic arts, orchestra, band, dance, chorus and guitar. There was also a club for stage technicians. In the other wing was a creative arts installation based on sea life. They also use the performing arts center on the upper campus.
We then walked to the 6th grade building. There were more people there, a few we recognized, and some friends Jack already knew. We met one of the English teachers. There was Shakespeare inside, but also Bob Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited. The English teacher next door had student mythology stories on the wall and language reference books on every table. In a science room, we met a science teacher and the head master again. The large room looked made for experiments and projects, although not a lab how I remember. (More labs are located in a separate building in the middle of the campus.) The sixth graders are taught life sciences, and I gathered that included some fundamental scientific tools and many different subjects and whatever seasonal or celestial event that was happening. There was a handmade periodic table of the elements along one wall. We visited two history teachers. One room was filled with classic history posters and her class concentrated on U.S. History from the Industrial Revolution to World War I. The other room was an explosion of popular culture ephemera and the subject matter included most of my lifetime.
Inside this building are lockers and a student common area with one wall dedicated to daily schedules. We indulged in the refreshments there. The sixth graders are divided into two halves, what they call, in their pod-speak, pods, and those are further divided at least two times until you get a family of one teacher and 10 or less students who eat lunch together every day in their dining hall in yet another building.
We almost didn't go the lower campus administrative building, but it was only half administrative. There was an atrium and a small bookstore inside and several more classrooms and more lockers. Jackson got to talk with the Tech App teacher. She understood him. In her class, each student creates their own web page using html script; not so much, she conceded, the java script Jackson is now using, among whatever else he's doing. We also met, unfortunately so briefly, a Spanish teacher and finally a math teacher. Spanish is required. I wondered how advanced the students might be in math but Jackson was soon talking with the teacher about calculating volumes, which he is doing now in his general class, and a mathematical theorem he must have learned in his gifted class. In between we visited the music room, filled with instruments and keyboards, and talked with the teacher.
That was a full two hours. It was sunny that day, no breeze, and we were still exhausted from the previous day. We had already visited the upper campus and the library before, and the boys and I have practiced on the some of the athletic fields already. Ry and I have run around its track. I have swum in its pool and run on its cross country course. We didn't get to visit with the physical education program or get much information on athletics for sixth graders.
The remainder of the day was spent with yard work, computer gaming, a work out, church, catch, soccer, French toast and leftovers. I saw Jackson sitting with Rylee that evening, helping him with graphs on his homework. I do wonder what will come in three years with Rylee. As Jackson said the other day, their scores for applying to gifted were exactly the same. I love the smarts I see in both. Ry is still 7 but he wants to do now what Jack is doing, whether it's sports or academics. In ways, he's excelled earlier than Jack. While he exudes confidence and ability, he's also still shy around adults. Jack was never shy. Ry gets to start his gifted class at Dennis Chavez tomorrow.
We walked first to the far side of the lower campus to the visual arts building. The art room was filled with student drawings, paintings, and sculpture. Three sixth grade students were printing the frontispieces for their portfolios on a printing press. The art teacher told us about filmmaking opportunities in the future and an artist in residence program next year. We then walked to another building which had two wings: a technical applications wing and a performing arts space. We met a drama teacher and he filled us in on some of the choices. As I recall there were dramatic arts, orchestra, band, dance, chorus and guitar. There was also a club for stage technicians. In the other wing was a creative arts installation based on sea life. They also use the performing arts center on the upper campus.
We then walked to the 6th grade building. There were more people there, a few we recognized, and some friends Jack already knew. We met one of the English teachers. There was Shakespeare inside, but also Bob Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited. The English teacher next door had student mythology stories on the wall and language reference books on every table. In a science room, we met a science teacher and the head master again. The large room looked made for experiments and projects, although not a lab how I remember. (More labs are located in a separate building in the middle of the campus.) The sixth graders are taught life sciences, and I gathered that included some fundamental scientific tools and many different subjects and whatever seasonal or celestial event that was happening. There was a handmade periodic table of the elements along one wall. We visited two history teachers. One room was filled with classic history posters and her class concentrated on U.S. History from the Industrial Revolution to World War I. The other room was an explosion of popular culture ephemera and the subject matter included most of my lifetime.
Inside this building are lockers and a student common area with one wall dedicated to daily schedules. We indulged in the refreshments there. The sixth graders are divided into two halves, what they call, in their pod-speak, pods, and those are further divided at least two times until you get a family of one teacher and 10 or less students who eat lunch together every day in their dining hall in yet another building.
We almost didn't go the lower campus administrative building, but it was only half administrative. There was an atrium and a small bookstore inside and several more classrooms and more lockers. Jackson got to talk with the Tech App teacher. She understood him. In her class, each student creates their own web page using html script; not so much, she conceded, the java script Jackson is now using, among whatever else he's doing. We also met, unfortunately so briefly, a Spanish teacher and finally a math teacher. Spanish is required. I wondered how advanced the students might be in math but Jackson was soon talking with the teacher about calculating volumes, which he is doing now in his general class, and a mathematical theorem he must have learned in his gifted class. In between we visited the music room, filled with instruments and keyboards, and talked with the teacher.
That was a full two hours. It was sunny that day, no breeze, and we were still exhausted from the previous day. We had already visited the upper campus and the library before, and the boys and I have practiced on the some of the athletic fields already. Ry and I have run around its track. I have swum in its pool and run on its cross country course. We didn't get to visit with the physical education program or get much information on athletics for sixth graders.
The remainder of the day was spent with yard work, computer gaming, a work out, church, catch, soccer, French toast and leftovers. I saw Jackson sitting with Rylee that evening, helping him with graphs on his homework. I do wonder what will come in three years with Rylee. As Jackson said the other day, their scores for applying to gifted were exactly the same. I love the smarts I see in both. Ry is still 7 but he wants to do now what Jack is doing, whether it's sports or academics. In ways, he's excelled earlier than Jack. While he exudes confidence and ability, he's also still shy around adults. Jack was never shy. Ry gets to start his gifted class at Dennis Chavez tomorrow.
Friday, March 29, 2013
the academy
It was a very exciting day Thursday. Cyndi went to the mailbox and found the letter from the Academy. She called me right away. She was so excited. Jackson was accepted. And the extra surprising news was the amount of financial aid they awarded. It makes it very doable for him to go. There really is no question about it.
When school was out, Cyndi put me on the speaker on her cell phone so she could tell Jackson. He squealed with delight. I emailed Ariel with the news and included Rylee in our celebration, so he knows that his time, just like Ariel's and Jackson's, will come, too.
All in all, a pretty exciting week. I'm also very excited about the boys' scrimmages this weekend. The following weekend there'll be opening games on Saturday and a ceremony for new admittees on Sunday.
Link to Albuquerque Academy website.
Link to Wikipedia article.
When school was out, Cyndi put me on the speaker on her cell phone so she could tell Jackson. He squealed with delight. I emailed Ariel with the news and included Rylee in our celebration, so he knows that his time, just like Ariel's and Jackson's, will come, too.
All in all, a pretty exciting week. I'm also very excited about the boys' scrimmages this weekend. The following weekend there'll be opening games on Saturday and a ceremony for new admittees on Sunday.
Link to Albuquerque Academy website.
Link to Wikipedia article.
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