Reply to Is HB Woodlawn right for my son?

Forum Index » Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS)

Reply to "Is HB Woodlawn right for my son?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous]Please help me decide if HB Woodlawn would be a good fit for my son!

We are Arlington residents currently living overseas.  We were planning to return to Arlington, so I entered my son in the Woodlawn lottery and he got in.  However, we may have the option to stay overseas for an additional 1-2 years.  The pros and cons to staying here are pretty evenly split.   I'm currently weighing if HB Woodlawn would be a good fit for my son, and if so, how strong a factor.  (If we stay overseas and later return to Arlington, then I assume he would go to our neighborhood schools, Swanson then Yorktown)

DS is a complex kid.  He is really bright--scoring in the 95th percentile or above on math and reading aptitude tests.  He reads constantly (especially when we force him to be done with screen time) and his vocabulary is ridiculously large.  He can be very witty, and when he puts effort into it, he is a really talented writer.

On the other hand, he's not a terrific student.  If he likes an assignment, he'll do an outstanding job.  But if he doesn't like it--like math worksheets-he'll generally do an OK, but not great, job.  We've been lucky to be able to place him with teachers who get him and will nudge him to work up to his potential.  He's also pretty disorganized--forgetting homework, his clarinet, gym uniform, etc.  So much about HBW is about being a self-motivated, disciplined student.  Are those skills that HBW helps students build in the early years, or is it assumed that they come in having them already?

I think he would love the small school environment and the ability to have input into school rules.  He is not athletic, so the lack of sports teams at HBW would be more of a relief than a downside for him.

Does having more freedom/flexibility at school, mean more freedom to design projects, assignments, etc to meet requirements?  I think he might be more engaged if he could decide within very broad limits how to demonstrate mastery of a topic.  (I can imagine him, for example, building a Lego scene of a famous battle or recruiting friends/family to act in a first-person-shooter style video about it, rather than necessarily writing an essay about it.)

Thanks for any thoughts about whether or not he'd be a good fit for HBW and any other info about the school!
[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics