Over the past few weeks I've been doing school visits to various local schools (mostly year-round, which is why I visited in August). I talk to them about adoption, about writing, and about my book, When I Met You: A Story of Russian Adoption.

I wrote about my classroom visits a bit at the end of the last school year (in this blog entry, this one, and this one), when I'd gone into my son's classroom as well as one of the 3rd grade classrooms at his school to do a talk. But now I've ventured out into less familiar territory. I've been going to schools where they don't know me and I don't know them. And, except for one school where I knew the librarian because she goes to my gym, I have contacted them through a cold call.

Here's the good news: I've gotten nothing but a warm reception from all of these schools, including teachers, librarians, administration, and students. Nancy, our Reactive Attachment Blogger as well as the Adopting a Sibling Blogger, has written about some recent bad experiences with talking to her daughter's school about adoption. You can read her story here, here, here, here, and here!

I'm not sure why the different reactions to our request to speak, except that I am approaching the schools to talk to them as a writer, and I have designed programs to go along with our state's curriculum, and Nancy was going to school to talk specifically about adoption as a parent (and a parent with some history with that school, too). Since my book is about adoption I think it's pretty obvious that that will be a topic of my talk, but I also explicitly point this out to any school I've approached, just in case.

So far, so good.

I most recently (like, this morning) spoke to 2nd graders and I was really impressed with how knowledgeable they were. Everyone knew what adoption was (I explained it anyway), many of them knew someone who was adopted, many of them had family members who were adopted, and many of them even knew where Russia is. They also asked really intelligent questions - questions I think many prospective adoptive parents from Russia ask!

How long does it take a child adopted from Russia to learn English?

How long does it take to adopt from Russia?

Do you get to pick a boy or a girl?

Do you teach your son Russian now?

Are you going to take him back to Russia when he gets older?

These are 7 year-olds, ya'll! I was really impressed. And I also have a really great taste in my mouth because of my school visits - I wish that every school was as receptive as the great schools that I've been to.