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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Getting back to the question originally asked.

[u]What we loved about Cold Spring[/u]:
- The phenomenal 5th grade teacher who brings the Shakespeare play and Latin instructions to the school.  When she retires, it will be a huge lost to the program.
- The 4th grade male teacher who speaks so passionately about social injustice for the marginalized groups
- The challenging humanities curriculum.  There has been a replacement of a veteran 4th grade teacher (who gave good writing instructions) so not sure if the rigor is the same with the new teacher.
- Math teams before school, although this had nothing to do with the CES itself.  Just that it was available and ran by the parents at the school.  Some other elementary schools have them also.
- The peer cohort were generally a smart group of kids

[u]What we dislike about Cold Spring[/u]:
- The peer cohort!  Smart bullies who disparaged other children, but their parents think they were angels because their grades were decent or that they were the spelling/geo/olympiad stars.  Some kids had really poor manners, used "stupid, dumb, you're an idiot, or you suck" very generously and it all went unchecked.
- Workload was heavy in 5th grade, which really required cutting back many extracurricular activities
- 4th grade compacted math was a bit of a joke our year.  
- 5th grade math/science were completely uninspiring and not at all enriched.
- Except for a couple of girls, most seem uninterested in student government, patrol, science fair, variety show, etc
- Little community feel for the CES kids - hardly anyone from the center went to the picnics, movie night, fundraiser because everyone was so busy and events were typically done on a non-Friday.  There was little intermingling between the community kids and the CES kids.
- Very few playdates and birthday parties - kids and parents were involved with other things, I guess.
- Kids were given lots of writing assignments, but little actual writing instructions.  For my own child, I had to teach DC how to write properly.
- Some kids, especially the ones who were already motivated and organize, truly blossomed from the program while others seem to lose steam by end of 5th and seemingly glad to be back to their home middle schools
- Lack of overall free time for 2 very important years of social and emotional growth outside of school
- Parents can be pretty serious.  That said, we did meet some really nice and helpful ones who we still keep in contact with, but they are still intense (in good way).[/quote]

Thanks for sharing the quite helpful and detailed insights. As a 4th grader CS CES parent, several update on this:
- now one of the two classes of 4th grader take the new math pathway, skipping the 4th grade math, and finish 5/6 math in 4th grade, and will take IM in 5th grade. CS has almost finalized hiring a middle school teacher to teach them IM next year, so I have to say they are challenged most of the time in math now. 
- 4th grade experience female teacher went up the ladder to the office, and the new teacher is mediocre, I have to say. 
- since 5th grade CES kids are already a lot, principal doesn't allow 4th grader to participate in the MOEM training nor test, and MOEM rules exclude them of attending the test in other organizations. Some parents organized the math league, but the content was too easy to challenge them.

Other than the above updates, we didn't feel much of the "smart bullies", maybe because DS is not a sensitive one, and he has many friends from local school got into Cold Spring as well. They do discuss much more explicitly about their grades, even on a specific project, which I don't quite like. We also got quite some birthday invitations, and DS participated in SGA, partrol training, and science fair. He became more accountable, not sure because of the Cold Spring environment, or because he is one year older than before. [/quote]

We find that in 4th, some of the children try their best to participate in SGA, patrol, science fair.  Playdates seem more often in 4th as well because people are trying to search out friends for their kids, but by 5th the dynamics shift.  My kid did a travel sport and an instrument and it was really hard to maintain a good balance.  He does not regret the CES but now that he is older and seeing how other kids progress, he felt he would have been the same curious student who would have done well whether he went to Cold Spring or not.[/quote]

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