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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]We were fine with PreK3, but by PreK4 we were fed up with report cards complaining that our active kid wouldn't sit still (for long periods).  We're thrilled that the younger sibling has landed in an early childhood program that's loads more active, fun, creative and nurturing.  Our kid was drilled on early reading skills too much, and promptly forgot much of what she learned.

[b]We also wearied of a set-up that oozed paternalism (we planned a party for low income families and these annoying gentrifiers turned up!)[/b]. AppleTree pretends to be user friendly, but it's very top down outfit at all the campuses.

[/quote]

What the heck does that mean?

Anyway, I'd be interested to hear Appletree CH's version of their feedback about your child.  I work in education, have worked in a tremendous number of both charters and DCPS schools in the last 10 years, and my child went there for PK3.  Not only did I see NONE of the yelling another PP mentioned, I was absolutely impressed and surprised with just how well the teachers handled "extra active" kids.  The first week of school I looked around my DS's classroom and thought "Wow, I want to give this school a shot but I don't know that these teachers are going to be able to wrangle some of these students who've clearly never ever been in a structured environment into the routines they've set up..."

How wrong I was.  They were phenomenal teachers, and they hadn't been teaching for long at all.

I saw and heard similar feedback from parents in every single classroom of the 5 or 6 I knew people in.

Not only that (this part goes to general feedback) but the year she went there we changed insurance companies so my DS had appts with 2 different pediatricians.  Both pediatricians stopped in the middle of the appointment and asked where DS went to school and said some version of "Wow, I don't usually hear kids so young this articulate about so many topics!".  And one of them had a very high-income population as patients.

PP the best thing you can do is just go to CH and ask them for a tour.  We found them pretty good about doing it during the day quickly if they weren't too busy, even just as a drop in which is how we did it when we were checking them out.  See for yourself.  Even though we got into our #1 pick for PK4, we actually lamented a bit that DS would miss PK4 at Appletree because we thought so much of the school and he did so well there.  But we are very happy we took that other spot of course, since Appletree doesn't go past PK4.[/quote]

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