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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]
Both schools have bright, intense students. Both are high pressure, but STA has more moderating elements. Faculty are very engaged and caring at STA; they are invested in the success of every student.  Sidwell teachers on the whole seem more detached. [b]At Sidwell if a child needs help, it's their job to reach out to the teachers. At STA if a child needs help, the teacher might reach out to the child.    [/b][/quote]

The bolded is called self-advocacy. Students should have a sense of where they are and if they need help, to be proactive about it. Bosses and college professors won't coddle, the earlier the students learn it, the better.

And yes, the college counseling at Sidwell was a disaster a few years ago. They have 5 staffers now headed by a true pro, so it ended up at a better place because of it.[/quote]

This self-advocacy line is BS that is just made up by commenters on this message board. It is not actually what Sidwell touts. And that should not be a surprise, because suggesting that 14 and 15 year old kids should need to beat down a teacher's door to get help or advice because that's the way it will be in college or a job is hardly a selling point for a high school. Instilling relationships where young adults see that authority figures can be invested in them and their success, and developing meaningful mentoring relationships with them, is actually a much better way for them to learn self-advocacy. Because you learn how to experience that type of relationship and how it can benefit you. And when the relationship doesn't exist, you know what to ask and advocate for. PP's comment about Sidwell teachers is a fair characterization when talking generally (there are some exceptions) and it is a glaring weakness of the school.[/quote]

Disagree.

I have found the teachers very receptive to students approaching them. Generally speaking they are warm, and care greatly about their students. The point about the self-advocacy is spot on, it is messaged in parent back-to-school nights, it is articulated to the students. If families are not getting that message, I am not sure what to say. They really want students to reach out to faculty, ask questions, develop relationships etc.[/quote]

The question is not whether teachers are receptive when students reach out (though I have seen many who are not). The question is whether students only get help when they "self-advocate" and reach out, and whether students who do not "self advocate" are allowed to struggle in silence or, perhaps, muddle along.

I have heard Deans Gross and Woods, among others, discuss the way they believe the school's mentoring and advising relationships should work. And their views and what they tell parents are not focused on fend-for-yourself self-advocacy. The problem is that the faculty is not willing to go along with being more proactive with students, for the reasons that the original poster described. This is not a selling point for the upper school, and the self-advocacy line is a concocted one.

Also, if you are the PP who talked about bosses won't "coddle" and self-advocacy is needed in the workplace? Do you actually function in today's workplace? Because I am an equity partner at a big downtown law firm. And the mentoring of young lawyers is a constant topic among my (successful and kind of intimidating) partners and friends at other firms. Very few partners take the approach any more that feedback or advice is only given to associates who seek it out, and of those who do, only the tremendously successful can get away with it for long.[/quote]

Agree that the advisory/ mentoring system in the upper school, particularly, needs some work. What can we as parents do to push the school to work on this?[/quote]

I don’t see efforts going very far. Sidwell gives its teachers a ton of autonomy, for better and worse—depending on the issue. [/quote]

I'm hopeful that the pandemic will be cause for the school to reassess some things. The disconnectedness that many students felt was heightened by the lack of meaningful advisory relationships already existing. Talk to Robbie and Michael for now. And then maybe Mamadou later, or perhaps a group of parents might meet with Mamadou.

PP, you are right about the teachers though. In the past there have been much smaller changes that the admin has tried to put into place and that the teachers have resisted. It's sad, because this would be such a positive step for the upper school to take.[/quote]

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