This week's Adoption Link Up topic is "School and Adoption Sensitivity." This is an interesting topic.
Quick background on my family
We have two children. J was adopted while we lived in Germany. He has been with us since birth. When he was two, he became the younger brother when we adopted S who was 4 from Bulgaria.
Projects requiring baby pictures
Within months of S coming home, he started school as a PreKindergarten student. PreK students do a lot of projects including pictures of family. We had read about this and printed articles for his teacher to read. She was fabulous and worked with us to make sure the projects didn't exclude S by asking for baby pictures. She worded things by asking for early pictures or young pictures. We were very fortunate, and we appreciate her sensitivity in how she handled this.
Because J has been with us since birth, baby pictures were never an issue for school projects.
The following paragraph is from a post I posted in May, Take your test scores and....
"When S started school, we didn’t know for sure how much of an impact his CP and vision issues had on his intellectual development. We were also dealing with the fact that English was not his first language. He was adopted from Bulgaria at the age of 4. Fortunately, we were working with a team that understood all of this. Just in case they didn’t, I had printed multiple articles off of the internet addressing the issue of testing children who were adopted internationally."
This team was receptive to this information. We were so blessed with them because the next school did not provide us with such positive experiences.
Testing
We had contact with the school prior to S coming home. We wanted them to be aware of this new student they would be getting. The team was amazing! Because S has special needs, the school knew that testing needed to be done.The following paragraph is from a post I posted in May, Take your test scores and....
"When S started school, we didn’t know for sure how much of an impact his CP and vision issues had on his intellectual development. We were also dealing with the fact that English was not his first language. He was adopted from Bulgaria at the age of 4. Fortunately, we were working with a team that understood all of this. Just in case they didn’t, I had printed multiple articles off of the internet addressing the issue of testing children who were adopted internationally."
This team was receptive to this information. We were so blessed with them because the next school did not provide us with such positive experiences.
Family Trees
When the boys had to do family tree projects in primary/elementary school, we gave them ways to incorporate their birth families/culture if they chose.
High School Biology
When J was a freshman, he had Biology in school. During their unit on Genetics, he came home laughing. They were discussing eye color and using a Punnett Square. The teacher was going through the square explaining it. "If your parents have ____, then you will have ____." J said he really wanted to raise his hand and explain that both of his parents have blue eyes and he has brown eyes.
I will be on the couch with chocolate appreciating the fact that our boys' teachers were respectful of our family.
Linking up with:
This was really interesting for me to read, thank you! We've had some teachers come up short on the baby pictures project. I like how the teacher worded it as a young picture. Thankfully after a huge search we were able to get a baby picture, but my son was very upset at the thought of not having one once.
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