Swings and roundabouts

The YFG burst in from school at 4pm with a bit of a miserable face and my heart sank! Happily, though, that was just about the routine for getting back on the bus this afternoon - apparently one has to run to get a seat near a friend! She got home safe which was all that mattered to me.

The day has been interesting - she has had various classes: technology, art and English, from what I can remember, as well as PE and a period with the form tutor. Those went well and she got around the school OK, with some help. What was the slight downer for her was that she has been put into a form/tutor group without any other children from the primary school here.

We received a letter on Tuesday telling us the tutor groups, and then she spent most of yesterday asking everyone which form they were in, and came home wailing that no one else was in hers. I had to go to a school meeting last night so I mentioned it to her teacher here, who told me that she had been promised by the transition team that the 17 children from the village school would be spread evenly across the 7 tutor groups - not difficult: 4x2 and 3x3 surely? So I confidently explained to her last night that she would get there this morning and it would become apparent who was there from the village. Somebody somewhere made a "whoops!" because she was right though - she was alone in the tutor group.....

This is not such a big deal to me as it seems to her, because she can't really yet understand how different subjects are taught in secondary school and how your friend A who is in your Maths class might not be in your English or Science classes. It turns out that they would only spend about 20% of their time in that tutor group and she may well be in English/Science/Maths groups without anyone else from the village so she may have to just smile and dive right in to making some new friends. She is generally a friendly and popular sort of girl so I think that she will be fine once she has made a few new friends.

She has been interested to see how many of the teachers have said, "Oh, you're X's sister, aren't you?!" and there have been quite a few. The EFG has a good reputation in the school, and the YFG is in the shadow of that, to some extent, so she is going to have to stand up and say, metaphorically speaking, that she is her own person and not actually that much like the YFG in many things - she's polite and well behaved, but not necessarily interested in or good at the same things, so the English teacher may have her expectations dashed whilst the PE teachers may be pleasantly surprised at her enthusiasm - the YFG does it, but not with much aplomb!

I have had an interesting day and made some unexpected contacts and discoveries but that's another story!