Need School Ideas?? And Insight on schools for new English speakers, & new to the usa/dc kids

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Montessori classrooms are mixed age, so the charters Shining Stars and Lee Montessori, as well as DCPS' Capitol Hill Montessori program might be worth a try.

Creative Minds and Bridges are known for their work with kids who have some special needs. Creative Minds will be difficult to get into. Bridges usually takes a lot of kids from their waitlist, as a previous poster noted.

Schools that have many English language learners are Oyster, Marie Reed, Powell, Thomson, Seaton, Bancroft, Stoddert, and Bruce Monroe. These are all DCPS schools, and you would need to live in boundary to get into most of them, although a few may have spots here and there. DC Bilingual and Mundo Verde are Spanish immersion charters with significant percentages of Spanish dominant families.

OP specified non Spanish.

We are at one of the DCPS dual language schools listed. There are certainly plenty of kids whose first language is neither Spanish nor English. The bottom line in DC, though, is that if you are looking for a school with substantial experience with English language learners, most of those ELL kids will speak Spanish at home. There will not be any public schools that will meet all of the OPs exhaustive criteria.

I posted above about CMI and Bridges and agree that OPs list is going to be next to impossible to find in any public school in the region. She will need probably need to prioritize and consider moving from NE unless they get very lucky in the charter lottery, simply because the schools most like what she describes have few openings for 1st and above (for her 8 yo).

[Anonymous]

Congratulations. OP! I am a ELL teacher in DC and I have worked with internationally adopted students before. I am no expert but I can share some things:
*DCPS places students by age, not ability. If your child is 8, they will place him/her in a class with other 8 year olds.
*Internationally adopted children will learn to speak (social) English very quickly, as this is the only way to communicate with their new caregiver.
*These children will still need ESL services for academic English and academics in general.
*Many of the schools in upper NW have a diverse ELL population, due to the embassies and World Bank. Those schools will have the most experience teaching non-Spanish speaking ELL students.
*Depending on the background of your children, you may want to research therapists. The students that I've worked with who are most successful have had some sort of therapy.

Good luck!