I Am Truly Blessed

All smiles

This blog is devoted to my children whom I am so blessed to have.

Today, my daughter Jasmine, who is 10, had a choir performance with her school choir at the Newmarket Theatre in Newmarket, Ontario. It was a Let the Children Sing Concert, Sleigh Bells Ring.  It was a charity concert and it was raising money for the Childhood Cancer Foundation.  Her school Doncrest Public School was approached about 4 weeks ago to perform in this concert, and was 1 of only 2 school choirs that was asked in the whole of the York District Schools board. This is a terribly short time for a choir to prepare for a performance to the general paying audience but the children and their music teachers Mrs Kraitberg and Mrs Sze worked very hard to learn and sing 14 different songs in this concert.

Doncrest PS Choir, Jas far right, back row

As I write this, Jasmine is halfway through the 2nd performance of the day, the first was at 2pm, which we were audiences at. It was amazing, 60 children from Doncrest PS and 90 children from Poplar Bank PS- a PS in Newmarket, sung their hearts out and gave us a great show. The children were so excited to be on stage and behaved impeccably well.  They had a long day, starting at 9.15 am and finishing at 9.30pm.  Dress rehearsals were in the morning, and  that went on a bit, by lunchtime, they were starving , it was 1.15pm after all.

Jasmine sang with enthusiasm and had a little roll ringing the sleigh bells for one of their songs at the end. She seemed to be really enjoying herself and we are so pleased for her. She had a really sad time in Trinidad last year, not getting on at school and hating the heat. She withdrew into her shell and refused to take part in anything. She found it difficult to make friends in her class and her classmates did not make it easy for her. Her teacher too seemed to ignore her difficulties, Jasmine coasted, did just enough work to get by and was not motivated at all. We could see our little girl getting less and less interested in things. We were concerned and tried to improve this, but failed to do so.  When she found out we were leaving Trinidad, she was very happy.  She would have been happier had we returned to England for good, but Canada was better than Trinidad. This is definitely true so far. She has shone in school, impressed her teachers in music, literacy, math and even PE. Her first report card came back with more Excellents and Goods than Mitchell's and that is really saying something. Jasmine's first report card from Trinidad said satisfactory for everything.  I must add that her teacher in Trinidad did this on purpose on almost everyone's report card, no one got a Good, let alone an Excellent!  Doncrest PS has been really good school for Jasmine and Mitchell too, and it was just by luck that they ended up there.  It was the school in the catchment area for the apartment we were placed in by the company.

Jas walking like an Egyptian

The best thing about it is that she has made many friends. In fact, on her return from her first day at school, she told me she had made a friend. This was such an improvement from Trinidad, where she told me that nobody spoke to her on her first day at school there. In fact, no one spoke to Jasmine for the whole of the 1st week! I guess if you attend an International School in a developing country, it has the rich attending the school and they don't like outsiders. Who knows? But a teacher that fails to see this happening and try to change the situation is unforgivable. In an odd moment of kindness, Mitch who had had a better reception in his class, had approached his teacher with concern, asking her if there was anything she could do to help his sister!  Mitch had been assigned a buddy to introduce him to the school. When I asked Jas's teacher if this could be done for her, she gave some bull-shit explanation why she thought this was unnecessary. Thus subjected my sensitive child in a new country, new school, new weather, new everything to a year of pure misery at school. The one thing she did enjoy at school was pottery club, but that was after school and run by a private teacher.

My boy

Mitchell now, he is going from strength to strength. He had a good year in Trinidad and thrived in school there. The small class of 17 helped and he had the most wonderfully fantastic teacher. She was empathetic and supportive when I approached her about the problems we had with Mitch at home, with his homework mainly. These issues were ironed out and things improved no end, until they ceased to exist.

Mitch has gone form being an average student in the UK to being an A student. I think the Canadian Education System really suits him.  He works extremely hard, is hard on himself and this pays off with test results coming back in the 90-100% mark range. He is working at above the level expected for his grade in almost all subjects, has been asked to join the school band and audition for the school play. He has even managed to impress the Library Teacher, my son, who's not one to bury his head in a book! He has a lot of friends and is very popular and is growing up to be a responsible teenager, if there is such a thing LOL.

Yesterday, when I'd gone in to help at the school library, and stayed for the choir's performance to the school, I was approached by the student teacher that has been teaching him for a month. She was a drama teacher and had her own drama school but was doing an additional teaching qualification to improve her teaching skills, and was telling me how different it was to have to teach Math and Language. She told me what a wonderful pupil Mitch was, how intelligent he was, methodical in problem solving and how amazed she was at his math ability. How he explained his answers in Math, how he set his work out. She was so amazed by the quality of his work she showed it to her boyfriend who is a mathematician, and even he was impressed. If anyone could have burst with pride, it would have been me at that moment. I thanked her, and said he was great and that we were very proud of him. I said , well, you know, his dad has got a Math degree, and tried to make light of it. She then said, well his language skills are great too, and what could I say?

Calzone!

On our trip to Lang Redang 3 years ago

My 2 children are happy in their new school. I have the teachers at Doncrest PS and the pupils there to thank.  There was some discussion that we might move schools at the end of this academic year, as it is very expensive to buy in the school catchment area. Our plans have changed now, we are not able to buy as our house sale in the UK has not materialised. This means we will continue to lease here and keep the kids at Doncrest PS. This news will bring a cheer form Mitch and Jasmine, I'm sure.

Almost as tall as me!

Perhaps I should say here too that we are very lucky that Mitch and Jasmine are healthy, and it's wonderful to be able to raise money for the less fortunate.  Having nursed children with childhood cancers, my thoughts go out to all parents who have had to endure living with childhood cancers.

I tried to upload a video of the choir singing one of their songs, but it didn't work - stil working on it!...