Escuela Key

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Have there been any updates? Happy to hear the principal reinstated. We were interested in Key prior to this incident, and had generally heard good things. After the incident we are nervous. We know it's a lottery, so who even knows if we would get a spot.

Are there any current parents out there who can share pros and cons of the school? We want our child to learn a second language, we value a close knit community and socioeconomic and racial diversity. BUT, most important to us is a safe environment and high standards / good teaching / emphasis on academics. Are those available at this school as well? Obviously no school is perfect, so I am curious what current parents like and wish were different.

I would only send your kid to this school if they fit into one of the categories below:
1. Spanish/Hispanic background and the language is regularly spoken in the home.
2. The child is from a State Dept/foreign service family and has lived in a Spanish speaking country and was exposed to the language during their language formative years.
3. Rich kid with Spanish speaking nanny who has spoken Spanish to them since they were a baby.

With the exception of kids who are born with exceptional linguistic abilities, kids who have not had previous exposure to the language are at a HUGE disadvantage. They start slow, but by second grade, it seemed as if they were expecting students to be nearly fluent. Those of us who have had to learn Spanish or any other language in an academic setting know that this is nearly impossible. And if students fall behind in Spanish, they will fall behind in all of the subjects that are taught in Spanish, especially math. That being said, I understood Spanish well enough to see that the math instruction at Key was simply bad and not very rigorous. It took two years of tutoring and moving to another school to undo all of the damage. More generally, we tried to seek extra help for our kids in learning the Spanish language and no one cared. They only care about English learners. It is not all bad. There are some wonderful, caring teachers and a very friendly parent community. But, in my opinion, the education and curriculum is deficient in comparison to other schools and it is simply not worth it for kids who are not native speakers.

To undo the math damage - did you move them to private or to another APS school?

Math is one of the bigger concerns for me. On the one hand, math is math in whatever language you do it. But it's so important to get a good foundation on it, that it's off to me that they are teaching it in Spanish. That would be the one thing I would want them to learn in English. If there are issues with the curriculum, wouldn't that affect the native Spanish speakers also?

We moved our kids to a private school. Other than math, I didn’t think at the time that all of the curriculum was bad, but now that the kids are in a more academically rigorous school, I have realized that those parts really weren’t all that either. In retrospect, I just would have gone with another school.

This is exactly what we have been pondering - what the differences are between immersion versus private (and I guess what type of private matters too - whether a parochial or one of the bigger independent schools). Any more info you are willing to share would be welcome

[Anonymous]

We had a great experience at Key (other than the pandemic). Our kids did Beast Academy to supplement in math, which has worked well for us.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Have there been any updates? Happy to hear the principal reinstated. We were interested in Key prior to this incident, and had generally heard good things. After the incident we are nervous. We know it's a lottery, so who even knows if we would get a spot.

Are there any current parents out there who can share pros and cons of the school? We want our child to learn a second language, we value a close knit community and socioeconomic and racial diversity. BUT, most important to us is a safe environment and high standards / good teaching / emphasis on academics. Are those available at this school as well? Obviously no school is perfect, so I am curious what current parents like and wish were different.

I would only send your kid to this school if they fit into one of the categories below:
1. Spanish/Hispanic background and the language is regularly spoken in the home.
2. The child is from a State Dept/foreign service family and has lived in a Spanish speaking country and was exposed to the language during their language formative years.
3. Rich kid with Spanish speaking nanny who has spoken Spanish to them since they were a baby.

With the exception of kids who are born with exceptional linguistic abilities, kids who have not had previous exposure to the language are at a HUGE disadvantage. They start slow, but by second grade, it seemed as if they were expecting students to be nearly fluent. Those of us who have had to learn Spanish or any other language in an academic setting know that this is nearly impossible. And if students fall behind in Spanish, they will fall behind in all of the subjects that are taught in Spanish, especially math. That being said, I understood Spanish well enough to see that the math instruction at Key was simply bad and not very rigorous. It took two years of tutoring and moving to another school to undo all of the damage. More generally, we tried to seek extra help for our kids in learning the Spanish language and no one cared. They only care about English learners. It is not all bad. There are some wonderful, caring teachers and a very friendly parent community. But, in my opinion, the education and curriculum is deficient in comparison to other schools and it is simply not worth it for kids who are not native speakers.

To undo the math damage - did you move them to private or to another APS school?

Math is one of the bigger concerns for me. On the one hand, math is math in whatever language you do it. But it's so important to get a good foundation on it, that it's off to me that they are teaching it in Spanish. That would be the one thing I would want them to learn in English. If there are issues with the curriculum, wouldn't that affect the native Spanish speakers also?

We moved our kids to a private school. Other than math, I didn’t think at the time that all of the curriculum was bad, but now that the kids are in a more academically rigorous school, I have realized that those parts really weren’t all that either. In retrospect, I just would have gone with another school.

This is exactly what we have been pondering - what the differences are between immersion versus private (and I guess what type of private matters too - whether a parochial or one of the bigger independent schools). Any more info you are willing to share would be welcome

Either one would probably do, but to be honest, s non-immersion APS school would be worth a look.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Have there been any updates? Happy to hear the principal reinstated. We were interested in Key prior to this incident, and had generally heard good things. After the incident we are nervous. We know it's a lottery, so who even knows if we would get a spot.

Are there any current parents out there who can share pros and cons of the school? We want our child to learn a second language, we value a close knit community and socioeconomic and racial diversity. BUT, most important to us is a safe environment and high standards / good teaching / emphasis on academics. Are those available at this school as well? Obviously no school is perfect, so I am curious what current parents like and wish were different.

I would only send your kid to this school if they fit into one of the categories below:
1. Spanish/Hispanic background and the language is regularly spoken in the home.
2. The child is from a State Dept/foreign service family and has lived in a Spanish speaking country and was exposed to the language during their language formative years.
3. Rich kid with Spanish speaking nanny who has spoken Spanish to them since they were a baby.

With the exception of kids who are born with exceptional linguistic abilities, kids who have not had previous exposure to the language are at a HUGE disadvantage. They start slow, but by second grade, it seemed as if they were expecting students to be nearly fluent. Those of us who have had to learn Spanish or any other language in an academic setting know that this is nearly impossible. And if students fall behind in Spanish, they will fall behind in all of the subjects that are taught in Spanish, especially math. That being said, I understood Spanish well enough to see that the math instruction at Key was simply bad and not very rigorous. It took two years of tutoring and moving to another school to undo all of the damage. More generally, we tried to seek extra help for our kids in learning the Spanish language and no one cared. They only care about English learners. It is not all bad. There are some wonderful, caring teachers and a very friendly parent community. But, in my opinion, the education and curriculum is deficient in comparison to other schools and it is simply not worth it for kids who are not native speakers.

I’m sorry if your kid had trouble/you didn’t feel it was rigorous enough. But your implication that 5 is too old to learn a language by immersion is just not true and is not supported by the research. My kids had no prior Spanish & picked it up fine… and I know tons of kids in the same position. They don’t all have “extraordinary linguistic abilities.” Learning via immersion is not like taking a Spanish class in high school.

Nice passive aggressive dig at my kids, thanks. But anyway, of course people can learn languages after age 5. I personally did. But almist no one gains fluency in a language after only two years of school instruction without some other type of background in the language. Key really ramped up the expectation that kids were near fluent by second grade, and if they were not, there was no help available. They just kind of assume that every kid has some outside source for learning the language. They were kind of passive in that respect. They did once have a summer language program for kids at Key and Claremont, but that got nixed. We were just over it and the kids just lost all interest in Spanish. They are actually taking another language at their new school and they are loving it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We had a great experience at Key (other than the pandemic). Our kids did Beast Academy to supplement in math, which has worked well for us.

The virtual instruction was really bad, but that was probably true at a lit of schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Have there been any updates? Happy to hear the principal reinstated. We were interested in Key prior to this incident, and had generally heard good things. After the incident we are nervous. We know it's a lottery, so who even knows if we would get a spot.

Are there any current parents out there who can share pros and cons of the school? We want our child to learn a second language, we value a close knit community and socioeconomic and racial diversity. BUT, most important to us is a safe environment and high standards / good teaching / emphasis on academics. Are those available at this school as well? Obviously no school is perfect, so I am curious what current parents like and wish were different.

I would only send your kid to this school if they fit into one of the categories below:
1. Spanish/Hispanic background and the language is regularly spoken in the home.
2. The child is from a State Dept/foreign service family and has lived in a Spanish speaking country and was exposed to the language during their language formative years.
3. Rich kid with Spanish speaking nanny who has spoken Spanish to them since they were a baby.

With the exception of kids who are born with exceptional linguistic abilities, kids who have not had previous exposure to the language are at a HUGE disadvantage. They start slow, but by second grade, it seemed as if they were expecting students to be nearly fluent. Those of us who have had to learn Spanish or any other language in an academic setting know that this is nearly impossible. And if students fall behind in Spanish, they will fall behind in all of the subjects that are taught in Spanish, especially math. That being said, I understood Spanish well enough to see that the math instruction at Key was simply bad and not very rigorous. It took two years of tutoring and moving to another school to undo all of the damage. More generally, we tried to seek extra help for our kids in learning the Spanish language and no one cared. They only care about English learners. It is not all bad. There are some wonderful, caring teachers and a very friendly parent community. But, in my opinion, the education and curriculum is deficient in comparison to other schools and it is simply not worth it for kids who are not native speakers.

I’m sorry if your kid had trouble/you didn’t feel it was rigorous enough. But your implication that 5 is too old to learn a language by immersion is just not true and is not supported by the research. My kids had no prior Spanish & picked it up fine… and I know tons of kids in the same position. They don’t all have “extraordinary linguistic abilities.” Learning via immersion is not like taking a Spanish class in high school.

Nice passive aggressive dig at my kids, thanks. But anyway, of course people can learn languages after age 5. I personally did. But almist no one gains fluency in a language after only two years of school instruction without some other type of background in the language. Key really ramped up the expectation that kids were near fluent by second grade, and if they were not, there was no help available. They just kind of assume that every kid has some outside source for learning the language. They were kind of passive in that respect. They did once have a summer language program for kids at Key and Claremont, but that got nixed. We were just over it and the kids just lost all interest in Spanish. They are actually taking another language at their new school and they are loving it.

I’m sorry. I really wasn’t trying to insult your kids. I was just pointing out that while immersion might not work for some kids, I know many kids who don’t have outside help with Spanish and have done fine at key. I agree that kids won’t be fluent by second grade, but in our experience that wasn’t the expectation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Have there been any updates? Happy to hear the principal reinstated. We were interested in Key prior to this incident, and had generally heard good things. After the incident we are nervous. We know it's a lottery, so who even knows if we would get a spot.

Are there any current parents out there who can share pros and cons of the school? We want our child to learn a second language, we value a close knit community and socioeconomic and racial diversity. BUT, most important to us is a safe environment and high standards / good teaching / emphasis on academics. Are those available at this school as well? Obviously no school is perfect, so I am curious what current parents like and wish were different.

I would only send your kid to this school if they fit into one of the categories below:
1. Spanish/Hispanic background and the language is regularly spoken in the home.
2. The child is from a State Dept/foreign service family and has lived in a Spanish speaking country and was exposed to the language during their language formative years.
3. Rich kid with Spanish speaking nanny who has spoken Spanish to them since they were a baby.

With the exception of kids who are born with exceptional linguistic abilities, kids who have not had previous exposure to the language are at a HUGE disadvantage. They start slow, but by second grade, it seemed as if they were expecting students to be nearly fluent. Those of us who have had to learn Spanish or any other language in an academic setting know that this is nearly impossible. And if students fall behind in Spanish, they will fall behind in all of the subjects that are taught in Spanish, especially math. That being said, I understood Spanish well enough to see that the math instruction at Key was simply bad and not very rigorous. It took two years of tutoring and moving to another school to undo all of the damage. More generally, we tried to seek extra help for our kids in learning the Spanish language and no one cared. They only care about English learners. It is not all bad. There are some wonderful, caring teachers and a very friendly parent community. But, in my opinion, the education and curriculum is deficient in comparison to other schools and it is simply not worth it for kids who are not native speakers.

I’m sorry if your kid had trouble/you didn’t feel it was rigorous enough. But your implication that 5 is too old to learn a language by immersion is just not true and is not supported by the research. My kids had no prior Spanish & picked it up fine… and I know tons of kids in the same position. They don’t all have “extraordinary linguistic abilities.” Learning via immersion is not like taking a Spanish class in high school.

Nice passive aggressive dig at my kids, thanks. But anyway, of course people can learn languages after age 5. I personally did. But almist no one gains fluency in a language after only two years of school instruction without some other type of background in the language. Key really ramped up the expectation that kids were near fluent by second grade, and if they were not, there was no help available. They just kind of assume that every kid has some outside source for learning the language. They were kind of passive in that respect. They did once have a summer language program for kids at Key and Claremont, but that got nixed. We were just over it and the kids just lost all interest in Spanish. They are actually taking another language at their new school and they are loving it.

I’m sorry. I really wasn’t trying to insult your kids. I was just pointing out that while immersion might not work for some kids, I know many kids who don’t have outside help with Spanish and have done fine at key. I agree that kids won’t be fluent by second grade, but in our experience that wasn’t the expectation.

Maybe it just differs by what teacher you have. In our second grade class, there was a huge leap in expectations relative to first grade.

[Anonymous]

We are also in the group who would not choose the school if we could do it over again. Our kids had Spanish capability before entering, so it’s not a language issue for us. What we found was that it was fine at the start, and then the problems showed up more as we got more into it. The quality of the staff and teachers is really uneven, and some are much worse than I ever imagined was possible. I don’t know how the academics compare to other APS schools as this is the only one we have experienced, but I would say it is not on the particularly rigorous side, and can be quite underwhelming for a child who catches on quickly, which can lead to boredom and waning interest in school/desire to go to school. Some classes also seem really to let a lot of misbehaviors really slide, and that also can affect the experience overall. We learned that you really have to document issues and insist upon action and follow up. Again, maybe this is true everywhere - I don’t know. But it’s been a lot over the years.

There also are huge gaps across the student body, with some who have clearly had lots of parental/outside help and others who have not and are struggling. Ideally they’d all be served and should be served, but in practice, the way the school (or maybe it’s APS, I don’t know), is set up doesn’t seem to provide sufficient resources to meet all the needs.

We really believe in the immersion model, but the way this is all put into practice here is lacking. There are certainly some wonderful, dedicated staff and some wonderful students, but overall, I don’t think the Spanish has been worth it— at least for us (but we can support it somewhat at home, so ymmv on that). It’s a shame that APS offers no FLES in lower grades outside of immersion, even as an after school enrichment option. My advice if you do choose the school would be to watch carefully and be prepared to really advocate and support your child in and outside of the classroom. The school has a lot of really vocal fans, and we in retrospect were drawn in and didn’t ask enough questions beforehand. That’s on us. And as for the waitlist - yes, there seems to be a waitlist, but they also seem to substantially clear it before September, so not sure what that means.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Have there been any updates? Happy to hear the principal reinstated. We were interested in Key prior to this incident, and had generally heard good things. After the incident we are nervous. We know it's a lottery, so who even knows if we would get a spot.

Are there any current parents out there who can share pros and cons of the school? We want our child to learn a second language, we value a close knit community and socioeconomic and racial diversity. BUT, most important to us is a safe environment and high standards / good teaching / emphasis on academics. Are those available at this school as well? Obviously no school is perfect, so I am curious what current parents like and wish were different.

I would only send your kid to this school if they fit into one of the categories below:
1. Spanish/Hispanic background and the language is regularly spoken in the home.
2. The child is from a State Dept/foreign service family and has lived in a Spanish speaking country and was exposed to the language during their language formative years.
3. Rich kid with Spanish speaking nanny who has spoken Spanish to them since they were a baby.

With the exception of kids who are born with exceptional linguistic abilities, kids who have not had previous exposure to the language are at a HUGE disadvantage. They start slow, but by second grade, it seemed as if they were expecting students to be nearly fluent. Those of us who have had to learn Spanish or any other language in an academic setting know that this is nearly impossible. And if students fall behind in Spanish, they will fall behind in all of the subjects that are taught in Spanish, especially math. That being said, I understood Spanish well enough to see that the math instruction at Key was simply bad and not very rigorous. It took two years of tutoring and moving to another school to undo all of the damage. More generally, we tried to seek extra help for our kids in learning the Spanish language and no one cared. They only care about English learners. It is not all bad. There are some wonderful, caring teachers and a very friendly parent community. But, in my opinion, the education and curriculum is deficient in comparison to other schools and it is simply not worth it for kids who are not native speakers.

To undo the math damage - did you move them to private or to another APS school?

Math is one of the bigger concerns for me. On the one hand, math is math in whatever language you do it. But it's so important to get a good foundation on it, that it's off to me that they are teaching it in Spanish. That would be the one thing I would want them to learn in English. If there are issues with the curriculum, wouldn't that affect the native Spanish speakers also?

This was our biggest concern but somehow convinced ourselves it would be ok. Go with your gut.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

We really believe in the immersion model, but the way this is all put into practice here is lacking. There are certainly some wonderful, dedicated staff and some wonderful students, but overall, I don’t think the Spanish has been worth it— at least for us (but we can support it somewhat at home, so ymmv on that). It’s a shame that APS offers no FLES in lower grades outside of immersion, even as an after school enrichment option. My advice if you do choose the school would be to watch carefully and be prepared to really advocate and support your child in and outside of the classroom. The school has a lot of really vocal fans, and we in retrospect were drawn in and didn’t ask enough questions beforehand. That’s on us. And as for the waitlist - yes, there seems to be a waitlist, but they also seem to substantially clear it before September, so not sure what that means.

FLES was a disaster. I danced a happy dance when that farce was cancelled. And that’s after I had supported its implementation, not imagining they could possibly screw something like this up so badly. Nothing but goof-off-time for the native speakers. I’ve experienced elementary foreign language instruction done right, so this experience had me worried, hoping APS foreign language in the upper grades is nothing like FLES was.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

We really believe in the immersion model, but the way this is all put into practice here is lacking. There are certainly some wonderful, dedicated staff and some wonderful students, but overall, I don’t think the Spanish has been worth it— at least for us (but we can support it somewhat at home, so ymmv on that). It’s a shame that APS offers no FLES in lower grades outside of immersion, even as an after school enrichment option. My advice if you do choose the school would be to watch carefully and be prepared to really advocate and support your child in and outside of the classroom. The school has a lot of really vocal fans, and we in retrospect were drawn in and didn’t ask enough questions beforehand. That’s on us. And as for the waitlist - yes, there seems to be a waitlist, but they also seem to substantially clear it before September, so not sure what that means.

FLES was a disaster. I danced a happy dance when that farce was cancelled. And that’s after I had supported its implementation, not imagining they could possibly screw something like this up so badly. Nothing but goof-off-time for the native speakers. I’ve experienced elementary foreign language instruction done right, so this experience had me worried, hoping APS foreign language in the upper grades is nothing like FLES was.

I agree that FLES was a disaster (My kids learned more in pre-school than in elementary). In our elementary our kids memorized spanish songs to sing at a recital; we learned that when our in laws came and after the recital asked our kids what words/phrases they knew in Spanish. They shrugged and said all they did was memorize the songs. They didn't even know what it was about.

That being said, it's horrible that some kids won't get ANY foreign language until 7th grade! (e.g. WMS does not offer to 6th graders).

[Anonymous]

Just because the way APS did foreign language was bad doesn’t mean it’s not doable by a system that knows what it’s doing. And it mean the immersion program is done well. It may be better for language learning than was APS’s FLES, but that is not equal to meaning it is done well.

[Anonymous]

*doesn’t mean the immersion…

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We had a great experience at Key (other than the pandemic). Our kids did Beast Academy to supplement in math, which has worked well for us.

The virtual instruction was really bad, but that was probably true at a lit of schools.

I think we can all agree that language immersion via Teams for little kids isn't going to work unless the kid already speaks the language. It's far from Key's fault.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Just because the way APS did foreign language was bad doesn’t mean it’s not doable by a system that knows what it’s doing. And it mean the immersion program is done well. It may be better for language learning than was APS’s FLES, but that is not equal to meaning it is done well.

I know a few families with kids who went through Key, then Gunston, and now have kids in high school or college. Those kids are fluent in Spanish and the parents enrolled their younger kids (second marriage) in Key recently. That seems like the ultimate compliment--choosing immersion again after going through the program.

My impression is that it isn't the right choice for all, but it's a fantastic option for some. My had-never-heard-a-word-of-Spanish-before-K student is speaking amazingly well now, only half way through 1st. She can do word problems in Spanish, write a paragraph in Spanish and tell a story in Spanish. She talks to herself in Spanish all the time when pretending and is reading Magic Tree House books in Spanish. It's been amazing to watch. She has no Spanish support at home, but seems to soak it up like a sponge. So far it's been really fantastic for her. I'm not expecting problems in 2nd as she seems so comfortable working and speaking in Spanish already.