Ashley started it off with Freshmen registration and schedule pick up. I went with her, but I didn't take any pictures. I was actually a little surprised that parents went with their kids to pick up schedules and get their lockers. I know when I went to high school NOT ONE parent went with their child to do this. But this is suburbia, with attached, super-involved parents so of course you go with your high school freshman and help her find her locker.
Another reason that parents have to be there is because they need someone to write all the checks for the copious amounts of money you have to shell out. A friend who lives in Ogden was saying how she really doesn't HAVE to buy a bunch of specific school supplies for her kids. Kind of made me laugh when I think of the huge list of items that my kids must have every year. It is very specific all the way down to the brand of pencil, count, size and color. In fact, I'm pretty sure they have these "preview" nights before school starts so that parents can help their kids haul in the bags of school supplies they have to bring.
Okay, back to Ashley. We went through the whole registration process, got her ID card and schedule and then went to find her locker and look for her classrooms. Her school by our standards is huge something like 3,000+ students. Her Freshmen class is around 700. Likewise the building has to be pretty big to accommodate all these kids. It's 3 floors and sprawling. In fact they just finished building a new addition. The lockers are in double rows, one on top of the other and of course, Ashley got a bottom locker. Kind of ironic as we saw a girl next to her who was less than 5 feet tall stand on her tiptoes to reach her top locker! Oh well.
We walked around to each of her classes so Ashley could orient herself a bit. This whole process took about 2 hours. At the end, Ashley was like, "Mom, can we walk through my schedule one more time? Just to help me remember it more?"
OKAY STOP HERE. What would your response to this be? I'm sure most of you would think about your little girl all grown up and needing a little more reassurance as she prepares to start high school and would therefore, probably say, "sure."
HERE IS WHAT I SAID, "No, let's go home." Go ahead and judge me, but seriously, IT HAS BEEN 2 HOURS. We have walked all over this place, up and down stairs, around the swimming pool, down this hall, etc, etc. I'm not the one in high school! I'm officially done. We have done enough for Ashley to get her bearings, she'll figure it out just like everyone else does.
I might mention two things about this: 1)The very next day after registration, a parent friend of mine, told me how they took their child back to the school later that night to walk the through the schedule again and actually time out how long it takes to walk from class to class. 2)Ashley was fine on the first day of school and had no problem finding her way around.
As for Paige, her school "preview" was pretty much about just meeting her teacher. Easy. Of course, it's never that easy. Because I am in the PTA, I had to make some posters and handouts and so it was a little bit of a hectic rush as we also had back-to-back activities that day. In the end, everything worked out. Paige even got the teacher we were hoping to get. Even better was that her best friend Riley is also in her class. We were definitely not expecting that as it always seems they like to break kids up. Needless to say, the girls were thrilled!
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| Dave got a picture for us. Paige's mascot is a "wolverine" Ashley mascot = "wolves" |
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