Amiya, the Author (Part 1)

Amiya's teacher this year is fantastic. Really and truly fantastic. She is demanding, but also encouraging. She is strict, but also warm. She gets Amiya and she lets Amiya be who she is - equal parts goofball and mini-scholar, with a lot of curiousity thrown into the mix. She allows Amiya the freedom to read what she wants and doesn't hold her to the grade level, but she also guides her to texts that are not only fun, but also enriching.

Pretty much I'd like Vinay and I to become polygamous so we could marry her and have her teach our kids forever. I would do dishes and laundry, floors and bathrooms. She could just teach.

Maybe that's a stretch, but she really is great. Case in point: the Presidency project. Each child in class submitted their top three choices of US Presidents to research and report to the class on. This is NOT a small project. This is a big project - the list of topics that each child must cover is longer than I anticipated, the format fairly complex. Sources must be cited and said sources must be varied. For a third grade project, I think this is big.

But that's the thing. This is what our third grader can do - and maybe it's what is missing today for a lot of kids who are capable of doing more than the curriculums demand. I fully understand that this is perhaps asking more than some children are capable of and that it seems daunting to them - to the point of shutting down. But for our child, this child, I love it. She needs to be pushed or she will just stagnate.

On to this project - Amiya submitted FDR, JFK and Ronald Reagan. (Are you scratching your head at those three? Hmm, which one doesn't fit? I was confused, too.)

Happily, for we already had a great biography, she was assigned FDR. It doesn't hurt that Grandma and Grandpa had spent a good deal of time touring FDR and Eleanor Roosevelt sites this past summer/fall on their way down here. Or that Eleanor was a pretty awesome woman whose quotes are uttered at least weekly around these parts. Or that they had a super, super cute dog and our little chicky is dog crazy.

We spent some time at the Roosevelt Memorial this Thanksgiving while in DC.
It is a beautiful memorial and I think we went at the right time of year. The fall leaves, both in the trees and on the ground somehow fit perfectly with what I know of Roosevelt and his terms in office. Serious, serious times for our country. It wouldn't have felt right to be summery and have people in shorts and flip flops.

Wasn't Eleanor just the coolest woman? I think so. She knew she didn't have looks, she didn't have grace, but she had brains. Not a bad role model for a seven-year-old, you know?

Anyway, I've digressed. Back to the report. It's big and it's daunting. But she's got it covered. Stay tuned for Amiya, the Author (Part 2). I'll put her text in here so you can see what she wrote. The rough draft is pretty nice - I can't wait to see where she ends up!