Reply to OLGC in Vienna

Forum Index » Private & Independent Schools

Reply to "OLGC in Vienna"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous]Right - they're just not equipped for that. It's not that I wanted my kids to be in a bubble where they'd never encounter someone who learned differently from "the norm," such as it is. The reality is, there are finite resources at OLGC and an administration that seemed to set very few limits as to the students they accepted who had learning differences. When one of my children was here, they were in a class of 58 total students, 1/3 of whom had diagnosed learning or behavioral/emotional challenges. And that's just the diagnosed kids.) They burned through about 4 different teachers in three years. I can't imagine how those teachers felt being overwhelmed in a class of 28 kids, at least 7 of whom had, e.g. ADD and/or dyslexia, with little meaningful resource support and no full-time aide. At least at that time, they did have a reading specialist who could do O/G or similar with the kids if needed. I don't know whether they still have one - last I heard the whole school's resource department was a 1-woman show, and she's great, but come on. They also have a wonderful speech therapist who I believe is called upon to serve pre-k through 8th. That's a lot of kids.

So, finite resources meet liberal acceptance practices, and something has got to give there. My kids had a few -bad- teachers here, and a few great ones. But most were just overworked and underprepared to deal with the needs of all those students.

You're also in a situation with any private school, I think, where the fact that a parent is paying any amount of tuition at all makes them feel kind of entitled to certain things. I am no exception. It got to the point with all my kids where I started thinking, wait a minute....

There's what, 7 class periods a day? Each maybe 45 minutes? So if 5% of that time is transitioning to/from and settling in; 10-15% (conservative estimate) is spent with the teacher dealing with one particular student who's having a bad day; another 10% spent with that typical group of kids who are acting out AGAIN, you're left with -- maybe 60ish% of the time for instruction of the kids in the middle, who don't all learn the same way and might be having difficulties of their own? All that in 25 minutes seeped in stress and the basic need of young kids and lingering frustration from days past? That's not necessarily a teacher issue, it's like a struggle that would be so challenging for any normal human just to get through day-to-day! And there were definitely cases where a teacher asked more than once for help from admin and admin decided to take a sort of wait-and-see approach. I just don't think that was probably very helpful at that time in those circumstances - seemed like everyone paid the price there except for the kid who was misbehaving.

Then couple that with constant demands from parents who do feel some entitlement, or whose kids aren't getting promised accommodations, or who just start to feel like, hold on a sec, I am paying just as much tuition as so-and-so, why does the teacher spend hours a day on them and maybe two minutes with my kid? It's not a very Christian perspective for a parent to have, but I have to admit - more than I'm proud of it was the truth for me.

Re: the country club, I can't speak to the younger set of parents, my kids have all left OLGC now. But I can say that when my oldest was there, the WWCC members were more like the people who knew they had means but wanted their kids to be around more "normal" (socioeconomically) kids. By the time my youngest graduated, that was really not the case for most of the wealthier families, whose kids tended to socialize only with each other and were kind of meaner to the other kids generally. YMMV, and there are definitely nice families from all ends of the spectrum here. I do agree that the richer folks are kind of taking over, but I recognize that is just like being snobby in reverse.[/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