The New School
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Anonymous
| Does anyone here have experience with The New School (located in Fairfax, Va). We are considering it for our ADHD inattentive daughter. Your thoughts and input are appreciated. |
Anonymous
| I'd like to hear some info too. I think there were some old threads on this, but I couldn't find them when I looked. |
Anonymous
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I have several years of experience with the New School. It has its pros and cons. It can be a great school for some kids; for others, no. What are your specific questions and concerns? For what grade?
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Anonymous
+1 If your kid needs structure, probably not the place for them. |
Anonymous
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My son is smart but struggles a great deal with executive functioning. I know everyone says their kid is smart, but amidst all his various LD testing was found to be around 98 percentile IQ in a bunch of areas. Just saying this for point of reference.
Anyway, his grades in high school are not good, he's got a 2.0 average. He does really well speaking and listening, but writing and test taking and traditional sitting at your desk way of doing things is really difficult. Bad adhd for which he takes medication, but it's not that effective. He will be a junior this year. What I'm looking for is a school that will help him learn how to be independent in his studies, improve organization and study skills, and a place that he will also enjoy socially. He's a computer guy, but also likes to be social. Never in trouble at school. Parents who know about the school, what do you think for him? We don't have a ton of money, so I'd be dipping into college funds to pay about 1/2 of tuition. Thx! |
Anonymous
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It sounds like he would do well with the seminar-style approach to learning. There's also a lot of freedom to get up and move around. Test-taking for math and languages is pretty traditional - no way around that. The biggest problem that I see is that he probably won't learn how to improve organization and study skills. They have a class on executive function. I have no personal experience with that, but I do not get the impression that it is very helpful. I think the executive function piece has to be a part of every class for it to really work -- not a separate class into itself.
Also, if he is really social, he might feel limited since it is such a small school. But if he's visited classes (which they require before admission) he should have a good sense as to whether that would be a fit. Have you looked at schools like Commonwealth that explicitly teach organization? |