Mundo Verde is the Best!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think one of the problems may have been the large influx of non-bilingual kids in the higher grades. I think that the school is trying to prevent a recurrence of this issue by concentrating the growth in the lower grades. That is not to say that no kids will be admitted in higher grades, as that isn't financially feasible at this point, but whole new classes will not be added in those grades. I believe they found that integrating too many new children in these years was hard, as the new kids tend to group together and not immerse as well. The hope is that the same dynamic would not occur if there were just a few new students in these grades.

Yes, I agree. Part of the problem is that some of the newer kids in the older grades don't speak Spanish; I would act out too if I was confused 50% of the time. But also, MV has the same issue as other high demand charters (at least what friends at other schools have reported to me) in that the older classes tend to have new students join that already have been at at least one but in some cases 2 or 3 schools. I believe these dynamics have to affect behavior.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think one of the problems may have been the large influx of non-bilingual kids in the higher grades. I think that the school is trying to prevent a recurrence of this issue by concentrating the growth in the lower grades. That is not to say that no kids will be admitted in higher grades, as that isn't financially feasible at this point, but whole new classes will not be added in those grades. I believe they found that integrating too many new children in these years was hard, as the new kids tend to group together and not immerse as well. The hope is that the same dynamic would not occur if there were just a few new students in these grades.

Higher grades? MV currently goes to 2nd grade.

The "problem kids" (lack of a better term) at least in the 2nd grade class I wrote about earlier are not new kids. They all have been at MV for a few years-some longer than the others.

[Anonymous]

^^That is a real good point about kids switching schools so often. I have wondered that reading this board, kids not in school yet, but i have to imagine the kids switching 3 times in elementary school cannot be helpful.

Why do the immersion schools accept kids without the language skills after 2nd grade? They have the choice to simply no longer accept new kids, correct? I think they need to consider the downside to the school community as a whole of adding kids who cannot understand the target language.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:^^That is a real good point about kids switching schools so often. I have wondered that reading this board, kids not in school yet, but i have to imagine the kids switching 3 times in elementary school cannot be helpful.

Why do the immersion schools accept kids without the language skills after 2nd grade? They have the choice to simply no longer accept new kids, correct? I think they need to consider the downside to the school community as a whole of adding kids who cannot understand the target language.

Their charter does not allow them to stop accepting kids because they do not have the language back ground. Their charter is written to accept child up to grade .

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think one of the problems may have been the large influx of non-bilingual kids in the higher grades. I think that the school is trying to prevent a recurrence of this issue by concentrating the growth in the lower grades. That is not to say that no kids will be admitted in higher grades, as that isn't financially feasible at this point, but whole new classes will not be added in those grades. I believe they found that integrating too many new children in these years was hard, as the new kids tend to group together and not immerse as well. The hope is that the same dynamic would not occur if there were just a few new students in these grades.

Higher grades? MV currently goes to 2nd grade.

The "problem kids" (lack of a better term) at least in the 2nd grade class I wrote about earlier are not new kids. They all have been at MV for a few years-some longer than the others.

Yes, first and second grade are high grades in which to start immersion. They would ideally be the fourth and fifth year for most students. I don't know anything about the second grade issues, but my bet would be a similar issue. Most of these kids didn't start until at least kinder ten after several school switches, and they never had the benefit of full immersion, which Mundo Verde quickly discovered after the first year was imperative for all students through Kindergarten. But, again, I am actually just guessing about this, as I have heard very little about second grade problems.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:^^That is a real good point about kids switching schools so often. I have wondered that reading this board, kids not in school yet, but i have to imagine the kids switching 3 times in elementary school cannot be helpful.

Why do the immersion schools accept kids without the language skills after 2nd grade? They have the choice to simply no longer accept new kids, correct? I think they need to consider the downside to the school community as a whole of adding kids who cannot understand the target language.

If it were up to some, they would have to accept huge numbers of kids without language skills through 12th grade.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:^^That is a real good point about kids switching schools so often. I have wondered that reading this board, kids not in school yet, but i have to imagine the kids switching 3 times in elementary school cannot be helpful.

Why do the immersion schools accept kids without the language skills after 2nd grade? They have the choice to simply no longer accept new kids, correct? I think they need to consider the downside to the school community as a whole of adding kids who cannot understand the target language.

Their charter does not allow them to stop accepting kids because they do not have the language back ground. Their charter is written to accept child up to grade .

I specified "no longer accepting new kids" as the choice above since they cannot select kids based on language knowledge, sorry i wasn't more clear but yes i see your point. Clearly YY and LAMB do it, so maybe other immersion schools should update their charter as it does not do the incoming kid nor the existing kids any favors to through them into a 50/50 model without the background.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:^^That is a real good point about kids switching schools so often. I have wondered that reading this board, kids not in school yet, but i have to imagine the kids switching 3 times in elementary school cannot be helpful.

Why do the immersion schools accept kids without the language skills after 2nd grade? They have the choice to simply no longer accept new kids, correct? I think they need to consider the downside to the school community as a whole of adding kids who cannot understand the target language.

Their charter does not allow them to stop accepting kids because they do not have the language back ground. Their charter is written to accept child up to grade .

I specified "no longer accepting new kids" as the choice above since they cannot select kids based on language knowledge, sorry i wasn't more clear but yes i see your point. Clearly YY and LAMB do it, so maybe other immersion schools should update their charter as it does not do the incoming kid nor the existing kids any favors to through them into a 50/50 model without the background.

Even they are going to be accepting new students in middle school though, right?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:6:22 - Um, she was a terrible assistant principal at Deal. Teachers hated her.

Hey negative nancy: the principal of DCI (formerly of Deal) is a man. People loved him. See Jeff's posts about him.

Ha! What a "gotcha!"

[Anonymous]

Can a current parent remark more on the aftercare program? We heard it was great too. What disruptive behavior are we talking about?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Honest thoughts - As a current MV parent I'd echo the comments on behavior, and this is particularly prevalent in the after school program. When I asked, I was told that teachers each have their own level of tolerance for chaos (they of course called it 'noise' - I am coining it chaos) and they are ok with that. I didn't love that answer but we're sticking with it as my child is succeeding, learning a lot and enjoys school and friends there. I think we will see how things progress and the kids get older.

We love many things about the school and feel good having our child there. We didn't 'choose' out of a lack of choice.

I believe they stop admitting after 2nd grade, so if the 'good' kids stick around and MV gets things under control we'll stay - if not we'll probably pack up and head out.

Actually MV accepts kids beyond 2nd grade.

I think you may be referring to the fact that they did accept applications for grades 3 and 4 this year. I could be wrong, but I believe they ended up deciding not to accept any students in those grades after all. If others have more info, please correct.

There will be at least 1 new kid in the 3rd grade. I

How is that going to work with the bilingual aspect? It's hard to jump into a classroom where you don't speak the language - 50% of their time is in Spanish and 50% in English

Are you sure the child isn't already bilingual? Maybe the parents decided to enroll him/her precisely to support the bilingualism.

[Anonymous]

I think a previous poster noted that in fact the problem kids HAVE been and MV for some time and are not new to the school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Can a current parent remark more on the aftercare program? We heard it was great too. What disruptive behavior are we talking about?

There is no abnormally disruptive behavior that I know about in the k and under crowd. I am not sure how the issues discussed above play out in aftercare. I would assume that if the same kids were in aftercare, the issues would be similar in both regular school and aftercare, but I don't actually know who any of the kids at issue are, if they are in aftercare, or how that works. Aftercare is generally mostly in Spanish though and a little more free wheeling than a typical school day, so maybe the issues are heightened. I really don't know.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think a previous poster noted that in fact the problem kids HAVE been and MV for some time and are not new to the school.

The pp was referring to her niece's second grade class, which is not the issue that most of us are discussing, but there has been some ideas on that above.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think a previous poster noted that in fact the problem kids HAVE been and MV for some time and are not new to the school.

That may be true for 2nd grade, but not for 1st grade; in 1st some of the problem kids are new and some are not. Kids talk and my child tells me who gets in trouble constantly and they are new (in 1st grade).