Reply to Any Walls boosters / haters these days?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Parent of an 11th grader. SWW is... fine. Some good teachers, some crummy ones. Nice community, lots of good clubs, kid has made good ffriends. But (nerdy, diligent, perfectionist) kid has been surprised by how few classmates are as hard-charging academically as they are.

As another person chimed in above, biggest benefit of the application-school status is there are no behavioral issues.

Biggest downside is the facilities. Very crowded building, effectively no lab spaces, and no athletic facilities, so the sports teams have to travel to get to their practice sites. I was surprised to hear that some teams get released early from their 7th period every day to go to practice.

Someone earlier said Walls stands to lose three teachers--actually, it's two. Not that that's great on such a small faculty. Unless things change significantly, SWW will lose a language teacher and the theater teacher.[/quote]

This is tremendously helpful - thank you. Do you think your kid is getting a strong foundation in the academic skills they'll need in college? I'm particularly thinking about whether they receive regular/substantive writing feedback, decent foreign language instruction, and sufficient depth in math/science (including lab sciences) to pursue those areas in college, if they so choose.

Mostly, I'm trying to figure out if Walls teachers will establish a strong academic foundation and set a high bar for my extrinsically motivated kid to work toward, or if it will take more self-direction/motivation.[/quote]

I'm PP. My kid is super self-motivated, so it's hard for me to tell whether their excellent study skills come as a result of the school or because of their inner drive. They don't talk much about school aside from minor complaints (typical teenager, I think, nothing out of the ordinary). I don't think they get a lot of feedback on writing.

They took Spanish starting with Spanish 1 and the first two years were pretty bad (taught by a nonnative speaker, no less), but I have the impression this year's teacher is a bit better.

DC loves science and has tried to take everything they can in this area but was shut out of certain classes this year (after being told there was only space for 12th graders) and at least one of those classes (AP chemistry) won't be offered next year. That's another downside--there are limited course options particularly at the upper levels, and kids can get shut out. Still, I think my kid will graduate with enough sciences and related fields (AP physics, AP bio, AP Calc BC, AP stats, maybe AP psych or envtl science next year) that if they choose to go into that area, they'll be fine. [/quote]

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