Reply to Where would you send a creative, curious but not super-academic kid for high school?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Sounds like my kid!  Well, except mine is a boy.  Delightful, extroverted, artistic, athletic, but not the academic superstar many of the area schools expect.

We were looking in 6th, not 9th, but I really liked SSFS, St. Andrew's, and Bullis for him.  My kid seems to draw energy from being outdoors so I decided Burke was too urban for us.  I think Field would have been a fit for him but it started in 7th so we didn't look carefully.  I also think that St. John's and Our Lady of Good Counsel are potentially good fits for him.

However, after looking at all those schools I looked at some MCPS public schools and decided to move instead.  Public school has been a great match for him.  [b]It's more structured than many of the private schools we looked at.  With expectations clearly laid out he's really thrived. [/b] In addition, there are lots of arts programs that he has loved, and the pressure is much more reasonable.  He'll move on to high school next year and our plan is to stay public through graduation.

I also love the Ellington suggestion.  If my son didn't want to play a sport in high school, I think Ellington would be my first choice for him.  [/quote]

In what sense is public more structured? I'm never sure what people mean when they say a school is structured. Also, what do you mean when you say that expectations are "clearly laid out?" I hope this doesn't sound adversarial, I'm genuinely curious and trying to understand.
[/quote]

For my child an important part of this is that expectations for assignments are very clear, there are rubrics and grading scales that tell him "this is how many points you'll receive for this, and for that.  If you want an A these are the expectations for what an A assignment would look like".  If there's a research assignment it's clear what materials they are expected to use, and those materials are available at school or through school provided online resources.

In addition, skills like notetaking and essay writing are carefully scaffolded so that kids are independent at each step.  There's much less of an expectation that kids are getting substantial help at home, so there are graphic organizers to help kids build sentences, then paragraphs, then essays.  If there's a test there's a study guide that offers problems to complete or questions to answer, that they then walk through.

For my kid (not for every kid, not even necessarily for me when I was his age) this structure is good.   When he is told "research this topic and write a paper" the paper is lousy.  When he's told "write 7 sentences with 4 footnotes from 2 different sources and a topic sentence and conclusion" he can do that, and do it well.  When he's told "study until you feel ready for the test" he decides he's ready after 10 minutes and gets a C.  When he's told "fill in these 10 answers, find the information in the book to check them, and then make and turn in flash cards for the ones you missed", he can do that and gets an A on the subsequent test.

In addition, in the classroom there's more of a no nonsense atmosphere, with clear expectations for behavior.  When I looked at private schools, I found that some private schools had a culture where there was lots of talking, and movement, and choices in the classroom.  My kid's elementary was that way, and for my particular kid the choices and movement and talking was really distracting.  In addition, there was a culture where kids got to choose how much they participated and in what way.  My shy, not academically confident, kid often chose not to participate.  Some kids can learn from just watching, but for my kid to bring things from working memory to long term storage he needs to be doing, talking, participating.  In public school there is more cold calling, and other techniques that forced him to do that.

I should note that I also looked at other private schools where things were very formal, calm, and had the high behavioral expectations that he needs to concentrate, but they also had a very "formal" academic style with lots of emphasis from learning from books or lectures.  My kid doesn't learn well that way.  Public school hits the sweet spot of progressive hands on activities (e.g. this week, he's been working on playing golf in PE class, writing and creating a movie in film class, reenacting a scene from Midsummer's Night Dream in English, completing an experiment involving dog urine in science (?), practicing for a county wide chorus competition, and painting scenery for the school play) with more traditional classroom management.

To be clear, I am sure there are private schools that hit that sweet spot. One that I looked at that seemed to offer the right mix was Bullis.  However, my income is such that once I realized that I could find a local public that was a very good fit for him, I wasn't willing to pay for the extra bells and whistles Bullis would have provided.

Again, I'm not here to preach about public schools.  But since the OP's kid sounds a lot like mine, and the OP is considering moving for schools, I thought I'd share my experience.  [/quote]

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