Aidan open house on Friday - disapointed!

[Anonymous]

attended the open house at Aidan on Friday. I really wanted to love this school and was eager to see the school/teachers/parent volunteers in action.
i've never been more uncomfortable - we've been to several open houses/tours this fall and we've never left early which we did on Friday. the parent volunteers were too busy talking to each other and virtually ignored my husband and I ( as well as a host of other first time preschool parents) as we stood in the crowded hallway. finally we all went downstairs to watch a short film and then broke up into groups of 10 to do a tour. ours was led by a parent volunteer that "didn't know much about the montessori curriculum."

Hello - why would she a)be doing the tour and b)how can you not know some of these things when you have a kid there yourself? They took our whole group into the classroom which felt really akward. The kids were obvioulsy interested in who the 10 strangers were that were in the room (and our prescence clearly disrupted them) but no one said "oh look, we have visitors" or anything to explain who these gawking adults were in their classroom. I felt like I was at the zoo with the guide admonishing us to "stay close to the wall" and not get to close to the kids. very weird. in the class we saw there were what looked to be at least 15 kids with 1 teacher and an assistant. I'm guessing because no one could tell us how many. When I asked one of the women in the class if there were 2 teachers, she said "one teacher and one assistant and I'm the substitute assistant" and then proceeded to repeatedly correct the children who were looking at us and direct them to "do their work."

I know a lot of people love this school. I know a lot of people feel very differently. I just feel let down because I really thought it was a promising option for us. Am I missing something? Was something going on at the school that day or was a scheduled parent volunteer unable to make it? Maybe that would account for my ill-prepared tour guide?!

[Anonymous]

You aren't the first parent to not like Aidan. People either love or hate this school.

[Anonymous]

You should search the archives on Aidan -- a lot of people have had bad experiences. Just wait for the visit/interview if you think the open house was bad!

[Anonymous]

OP here - we wont be going back for more, that's for sure!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here - we wont be going back for more, that's for sure!

We didn't either. i had really wanted to love aidan and ended up hating it after going to the open house.