When Riley started Middle School a few weeks ago, I was kind of freaking out! My oldest kid ready to enter the hallways of craziness? I know its been years since I was in middle school, but those memories haunt me still.
Kids think they are so cool, they swear, there are bullies and middle school is just a place where you are trying to find who you are and what group you belong to.
So, after a week went by of Middle school, Riley came home every day just loving middle school which was a huge relief to me!
He is such a positive, happy guy and I am so grateful that he is who he is.
We learned pretty quickly that the 6th grade orchestra was really not going to work out for him because it was such a beginner class, so I met with the middle school counselors to see if we had any options. They mentioned that there was one kid from the middle school who goes to the high school every morning for a math class.
I asked if there was anyway Riley could go to the high school for orchestra before middle school started. They looked at each other puzzled and said, "that has never been done before for music."
So, I told them that I would bet Riley could keep up
with the high school orchestra so we decided to go that direction.
The first day I brought him to the high school, I seriously thought we had made a huge mistake! Here we were, a big pregnant lady and a small 6th grader coming inside the high school with kids that were wearing blue hair and kids who looked like adults. We found where the orchestra room was, we got him all situated, and when I went to leave, I almost started to cry.
Middle school was hard for me, let alone high school!
I was dying all day. I could not wait for him to get home to tell me everything!
When he finally got home, I asked him how it went and he said GREAT! What a relief!
He said his stand partner is a junior and that she drinks tons of coffee in the morning to wake up, but that she is really nice.
I asked his middle school orchestra teacher if he could have independent study 3 days a week where he practices in a practice room on his own to really develop his playing and 2 days a week he plays with the 6th grade orchestra. She was find with this, and so it has been going so great for him so far!
I have seen a lot of development from Riley in music and in maturity since we started this new music schedule. He memorized a very difficult piece called Allegro by Fiocco in no time at all and is actually excited to play his violin. I have noticed that he has not once fought me on practicing and has actually asked for my help in some of his pieces because he wants to be better than the high school kids since they had a head start on him.
Last week, Riley came home from school and said that the high school orchestra teacher was getting kind of frustrated with the class because they couldn't get a certain passage of music. She then said, "the 6th grader can do it better than all of you!" Riley said it was complete silence after she said that...
When I go back and think about high school orchestra, if I had a 6th grader as my stand partner, I would have thought that was so weird! Fortunately, the high schoolers have really befriended Riley and made him feel comfortable in the orchestra! he has his first concert next week and he wants me to rent him a tuxedo since he will be the only one not wearing one! WOW---my little first born child has started to grow up way too fast!
Riley is such a great kid though, and I am so happy to see the kind of person he is turning out to be. He is so outgoing {like his dad!}, so confident, so happy, so inclusive and so smart. We are so lucky to have him in our family!
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