Today Jenine helped out at William’s school, and we learned that there’s quite the gulf between the grouchy old woman teaching his class and the sweet old woman who taught him in Colorado. This one is bullying, dismissive, and belittling. This puts us in the awkward position of being new to the school, yet dissatisfied. Jenine will talk to the head of the PTA and to the principal. I do not want my son to have three years with an inadequate teacher.

I found some online Maori classes while surfing to find out how long it would take Jenine to be able to teach (answer: one year of classes). I need to take the Maori lessons so that William doesn’t beat me. He came home with the Maori vowel pronunciation on Friday, and today he’s singing a song I remember singing in Primary school. I’ll post it as soon as I can find its name (all I could give you now is the phonetic chorus, something like “tato tao ay”).