When Hope was 3, I walked into our living room and found her carefully cutting apart a Bible.
When we asked little Hope what she was doing, she calmly explained she was doing her cutting work, language leftover from the year she'd spent as a two-year-old in a Montessori primary classroom.
That year, we'd fallen hard for the Montessori philosophy of education...and for the school community we stumbled into.
But a new job for me meant a new house and a new preschool (that was not Montessori) for Hope.
As it turns out, her new preschool did not allow three year olds to cut. Whereas her old school believed children were capable and cutting was a prerequisite for reading, her new school believed they were unsafe for toddlers.
Amidst so much change, little Hope just wanted to do what brought her comfort: cut. And so she did.
Even if she cut the wrong thing.
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The cutting incident was the first in a series of events that made us realize the preschool we'd chosen was simply not the right fit for Hope.
Six weeks into the school year, Hope was a shell of her former self and we feared that our choice in preschools was going to cost Hope a love for school.
So we made a change.
On the recommendation of a Montessori guy from our then-church, we found a Montessori school closer to us and eagerly enrolled Hope. While it wasn't AMI (Association Montessori Internationale) like Hope's first school was, it was certainly a better fit for Hope.
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A little over a year later, the pandemic hit.
When Hope started Kindergarten, like so many kids in the fall of 2020, she started it from home, not in a classroom.
Hope's kindergarten year looked so different than we dreamed it would; so different than we hoped it would.
Like so many others, she fell behind. Hope left kindergarten not knowing how to read.
Once again, we feared she'd never love school.
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That spring, another job change resulted in another move and a return to our old community, largely so Hope could return to the AMI school where we'd fallen in love with the Montessori philosophy.
She attended summer camp at school that year...and learned to read.
We watched as she started to thrive at school and make up the ground lost during the pandemic.
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Today, Hope started 5th grade.
No joke, she's been counting down to this day for weeks.
After returning from vacation on Saturday, she spent most of yesterday getting ready for today. The thing she most wanted to do was color a cover for her binder. When she showed it to me last night, I nearly burst into tears. Her drawing seemed to me to be an answer to a long-uttered prayer and a testimony to God's faithfulness.
