I toured Boo's new school this morning: she's going to the local elementary school in the autumn, entering the "Kindergarten" year. LOML and I are both big believers in the value to society of a good, free, universal public education, and see it as a good use of tax dollars.
And we are going to try it out with our children, and it makes me a little nervous. Boo is clearly very bright, and with a late autumn birthday, she'll be one of the oldest in the class. These two facts unfortunately combine to make it possible, likely even, that she is going to be significantly ahead of most of her classmates. What makes me most nervous is the worry about whether the school will be able to take the time to push her to what she is capable of, or whether they will just focus on the (also incredibly needful) underperforming students.
How this all works out will, I suspect, make the difference between whether we keep Boo and Skibo in the public system, or whether we suck up the cost of $XK per year to put them back in the Montessori system. I'm really hoping that the public system works for her, but I'm not sure how grounded in reality that hope is.
Yours, learning,
N.
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3 comments:
I feel where you are. We had our kids in a private school for similar reasons. After grade 6, there weren't enough students for our son to continue in the private school, so we enrolled him in the public school in our neighborhood. It's been a good experience for him so far, and it's exposed him to resources that a small institution just couldn't provide.
Everything has its advantages and disadvantages, of course, but ultimately it comes down to how willing the child - and by extension mum & dad - is to leverage every opportunity presented to him/her.
Interestingly, I live across the street from a Montessori school. If this is typical of the breed, I'm not impressed. The teachers are a whiny group of taskmasters, and the kids seem spoiled beyond belief. Not a happy place.
An effective school in my opinion is reflective of the effectiveness of the principal and his/her staff. Engaged leadership, the love of working with children, the ability to lead a cohesive group of teachers, a philosophy of lifelong learning and the promotion of respecting and providing for the uniqueness of every student.........these are the key ingredients in my mind.
the reason we chose to live in the neighbourhood we did had much to do with the school. It continues to have a wonderful reputation.... it's hasn't been completely smooth sailing...... but whenever there has been an issue, we have found that the principle and teacher have been very receptive to working things out with us.
I have been involved quite a bit over the years.....running the Home and School program and coordinating fundraising. It has allowed me a chance to form relationships with the teachers and staff as well as meet a host of parents and kiddies. It has given me a birds eye view of what goes on there.
It's what the community (ie parents) put in to it. My kids go to a public school, which I hated the idea of, fought with my husband about and lost. But I'm very lucky that our school is a very wonderful school, as it encourages and has great parent help system. This allows the teachers to focus on the lower and upper percentage, while parents and para-educators work with the "norm" during work periods.
There are some things I don't like about our school, but I probably would find things I would not like at a private school too.
As for Boo being older than some of her classmates. MM is one too, but it's helped him since he has learning differences. I know a couple other kids who have birthdays in Autumn and are older than their classmates and it hasn't been a problem. Hopefully it's the same for Boo.
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