Possible Retention

The meeting with Nelson's mother had been postponed for a week already, and when she showed up on time first thing this morning, I dropped everything and rushed up to the office to sit down with her. The reason for the meeting was nominally to check in on Nelson's progress since we had gotten together to discuss his first trimester report card. Nelson has been doing better. That is to say, he has been coming to school. He had missed almost a full month out of the first three months we had been in session. I had checked all the boxes and done all the preliminary work to put a big old X in the box that said "possible retention." That box is generally more for show than anything else, since by fourth grade we would rather do whatever intervention is necessary to keep the kids moving along, rather than staying put another year and getting more stuck and potentially more surly.
Nelson is bright enough, but he's shy. And he's sensitive. And he's spoiled. Most of the days he missed back then were simply days that he didn't feel like going to school. In the meantime, the fun bus we call fourth grade has kept chugging right along. As I mentioned, Nelson is clever, and he has been able to make up a lot of ground in his reading and language arts, but math has been a different story. Without the month or so of steady drill on division facts and procedures, fractions and decimals now confront him most unhappily. It is no wonder that Nelson doesn't like math. When it was suggested that he should attend math tutoring after school two days a week, a tear came to his eye. His mother asked our principal if there wasn't something that she could take and work with him at home. Our principal didn't flinch. When it became apparent that Nelson would be required to attend math tutoring in order to pass fourth grade, he launched into what my mother might refer to as "a hissy fit." And to Nelson's mother's credit, she signed the papers, and she moved on out the door, leaving Nelson in a sobbing, snarling heap in the principal's office.
Fast forward to this afternoon: Nelson's first day of math tutoring. I went by to be sure that he had found his way. He found a friend or two, and he was making himself at home. As it turns out, the after school program was not staffed by winged demons or child-eating crocodiles. He lived through it, and with any luck, he'll live through the next four months and learn how to do long division. And he'll move along to fifth grade.