Reply to Last night’s open house at ITS

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Was anybody else who attended less than impressed? I’m wondering, honestly, what makes people love it?[/quote]

This was my reaction too. The Open House was just not particularly well organized and they gave very little substantive information. I've been more impressed by open houses at comparable Montessori charters and I wonder if that's because they have a "schtick" to present, while ITS doesn't? We're not interested in immersion, but that's a specific schtick too. Like, maybe ITS is just a school that does school pretty well in a pretty traditional school kind of way, but that's hard to get across at an open house? They spent awhile talking about the teacher training program, which seems like a good program from the school and trainee teachers point of view... but it's not particularly attractive to me from the perspective of a parent. (It's not unattractive either, it's just something that is. Why would I pick a school on that basis?)

I also felt like the PK3 teacher who they had available was really dismissive of/didn't totally understand parent questions, whereas the Lee PK3 teacher was really engaging and made an impressive effort to answer even the most annoying of questions. That may be totally unreflective of how they are as teachers, of course... and that's only a 1 for 1 comparison. I was actually more impressed by the upper elementary (3rd and 4th grade) teachers ITS had available upstairs, that just seems so far in the future to me at this point/I have less idea of what I'll be looking for then.
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I COMPLETELY DISAGREE with your assessment of ITS Pre-K program.  The Pre-K program is why I elected to send my kids there. Our experience with Pre-K has been amazing. We've had both Pre-K teachers and I cannot recommend ITS pre-K program enough.  Our eldest is in K and they've adopted a new math curriculum this year.  The kids love it and it is very advanced.  I think the best thing about ITS is the dedicated teachers.  They are far more dedicated than any school I ever went to. I get daily/weekly updates about what is going on in class via email. I doubt other schools can say the same.[/quote]

Sorry, I was 100% not assessing ITS to be a bad PK3. I know lots of people who love it there. I was just unimpressed with the Open House and was trying to figure out why. I was unimpressed with the one PK3 teacher who was answering questions, but again I noted that I wasn't unimpressed in her teaching ability (which I didn't see) and that her ability to field parent questions may or may not have any relationship to that ability.[/quote]

Open Houses are pretty unimpressive in general. Or, sometimes, they are so impressive and it makes a bad school look good. All I am saying is, take it with a grain of salt. Some people present well, some schools care more about the OH. Many schools which are already super popular probably do not spend their limited resources of time and energy making great open houses. That might be a shame, but it kinda make sense too.[/quote]

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