Reply to Are progressive schools a bad fit for parents who want to see academic progress?

Forum Index » Private & Independent Schools

Reply to "Are progressive schools a bad fit for parents who want to see academic progress?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]You have to know your child. It was not a good fit for my older child, who has learning disabilities. It was fabulous for my younger child, who is a self starter and intellectually curious. He loved the freedom and we definitely saw academic progress.[/quote]

Why was it not a good fit for the child with LD? Why would traditional have been better?[/quote]

Progressive schools are based on the idea that if you give kids the right tools, they can explore and draw their own conclusions. My kid with LDs needed much more explicit, teacher-directed instruction.[/quote]

That is helpful thank you. What did that look like in the classroom for the older child? Did he just seem lost in the progressive school? [/quote]

Yes. And getting super dysregulated because he couldn't understand the expectations or the unspoken social rules that everyone else intuitively knew. And once he was diagnosed with dyslexia, our providers said he needed explicit instruction.

On the other hand, I can't emphasize enough how good it was for my gifted kid to be given the space to work things out for himself and to go as far and as deep as he wanted to. He thrived on the ability to make connections for himself (those same connections that his brother needed to be taught).[/quote]

Do you think that traditional and structured generally works better for ND kids then? Even ND kids who are gifted? Mine is gifted but a little slower on the social uptake [/quote]

I can only speak for my kid, who did much better knowing exactly what he was supposed to do and when. He needs the implicit to be made explicit or he doesn't get it. He also needs assignments to be straightforward and scaffolded. Traditional schools did that better than progressive.

Other kids with disabilities might chafe at being told what to do at all times and would do better with the relative freedom of a progressive 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