Yesterday marked the official end of summer for the twins. Early Start is a week behind the local school system here in our part of the world, so the boys don't officially start until tomorrow. But yesterday we had home visits from their teachers - all six of them!
Sawyer is going to be in the same classroom that he's been in for the last two school years. He will be with Mrs. R and Ms. J, who have been with him from the beginning. He also gets an added bonus in having Mr. K (from Xander's class last year) in his room this year as well.
Xander will be in a brand new room with a brand new teacher. The room and the teacher have been there before, but Xander was in a different classroom the last two years. We hated to move him, especially after Ms. E and Mr. K did such a great job with him, but we had to in order to participate in the autism grant program that is being piloted at the boys school this year. So yesterday we met his three new teachers. His main teacher is Ms. B, and he also has two assistants whose names I'm sure we'll learn very quickly.
We're excited for this school year and the new possibilities. We're especially excited to see how the grant program might offer additional assistance and expertise to working with kids with autism, like Sawyer and Xander. And of course, the boys will still be seeing a lot of familiar faces with their therapists Mrs. D and Mrs. C.
Unlike most kids, you can't exactly prepare our twins for things like the first day of school. You can talk about it for days or weeks, but it's not really going to sink in until they see we're driving down the street to their school and getting into the car line. That's when it will hit full force. I'm hopeful it will go well. They transitioned back in pretty easily at the start of last school year after summer break, and I'm hoping tomorrow will be more of the same.
It may take Xander a few days to stop trying to go to his old classroom, but otherwise, I think they'll find their routine in a week or so. It is only three hours, after all. And that's not much when you consider how early they've been getting up and how late they try to stay up at night. Long summer days are about to come to an end ...
