Reply to Why would the same person apply to ATS and Campbell? (Arlington option schools)

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My experience is a little dated now (DS is now in middle school), but we entered the kindergarten lottery for both ATS and Campbell.  We knew families who had had good experiences at both schools and we thought both offered interesting options that could be a good fit for DS, albeit for different reasons.  We didn't think that immersion would be a good fit for DS, so we did not apply there.

Pre-K DS was a fairly typical somewhat impulsive, high-energy boy.  It seemed equally plausible to us that he might benefit from a more structured and disciplined environment (ATS) or a a more relaxed outdoor focused environment (Campbell). The Campbell environment mimicked more closely what he was used to in Pre-K and that was appealing.  And the ATS environment seemed like it could instill good habits and high expectations and that was appealing.

When I attended the pre-lottery tours at both schools, I ran into lots of parents of boys like mine.  Some had made the prediction that Campbell would be the better fit and some ATS.  And others like me were interested in both options and were impressed by both schools.  Remember that the kids we are talking about are four or five years old at the time of the kindergarten lottery.  It doesn't strike me as odd at all that plenty of parents with kids that age would be open to schools with varied educational philosophies.

Who knows how your four/five year old child is going to develop in the years to come?  Why wouldn't you be open to exploring different types of schools? Perhaps the more significant divide is between the parents who are interested in lottery schools (any lotter school) versus neighborhood schools.  There are lots of good reasons why parents might prefer one model over the other.

We were lucky enough to get into both ATS and Campbell and ended up choosing ATS.  One of the things I found unexpectedly appealing about ATS was not the educational philosophy per se, but quite possibly a by-product of it.  There were tons of families there with at least one parent who was not born in the U.S., and those foreign-born parents were from an extremely wide variety of countries.  This was very noticeable on the tour and, later, very apparent in the composition of DS's kindergarten class where there were parents from the UK, France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Finland, Colombia, India, Egypt, and Mongolia.  This also described our family and I liked the international feel.

ATS proved to be a good experience for DS and we have no regrets.  But I suspect that we would also have had a good experience at Campbell.  And I can't imagine that I'm the only parent in Arlington with a child that could have thrived in either school.[/quote]

Second this. We applied to both schools because we were looking for more diversity (we just moved to the US recently from Turkey and didn’t want DD to feel different). We ended up going to ATS. I’m not sure what the obsession with philosophies is here. Kids enter kindergarten when they are 5 years old. Their personalities aren’t formed yet. Most kids will do fine at a school so long as it’s good. The philosophies don’t matter. I went to a montessori school until I was 6 years old then moved to a more structured school later. I transitioned just fine. All a child needs is a good curriculum, good teachers and a loving kind atmosphere. We ended up going to ATS and are very happy. It has the international atmosphere we are looking for, wonderful caring teachers and most importantly, DD loves it! I’m sure she would have enjoyed our neighborhood school as well :)[/quote]

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