I teach (PT) and today I'm home with a sick child. So I'm not on the clock in case anyone wishes to blast me.
But experience has taught me that a solid K-8 education is the way to go, and in my system, there are no K-8 schools. So we went the private route. While critical thinking skills are essential, w/o the basics, kids will never reach these higher level skills. In a K-8, true articulation takes place, and there is a curriculum with backward planning. So what I learn in first grade is buidling upon what I learned in K.
It's a win-win as far as I'm concerned.
So with fantastic skills, students should do well in a public high school - where there are more opportunies to specialize in certain areas (and more resources in general). Most of the students coming from our local K-8 private who enter grade 9 at my high school are amazed at the resources and take full advantage of what we have to offer.
Anonymous wrote:Prior poster, it is interesting to me that you would prefer to send your kids to private school for K-8 and public high schools. I am genuinely curious about your rationale for this, because I've always heard people say the opposite (that they would not pay big buck for elementary and middle school, but would do so for high school since that is where kids learn more complex work and since high school is so important for college). Any explanation (and I ask respectfully and without judgment, just curiousity)?
Anyway, I've also seen people who lived very expensive lifestyles lose everything during this recession. One family lived in designer clothes, had a private plane, went on several shopping sprees a year in NYC, sent their kids to private schools, and lived in million dollar homes. Lavish lifestyle is an understatement when it comes to these people. I've seen how the recession changed them, how they cannot even afford to send their kids to college now. It's made me think a lot about entitlement and greed. Had the family only lived within their means the whole time in an upper-middle class lifestyle, perhaps with the schools and house but without all of the clothes, cars, vacations, etc., they could have survived this recession easily. Instead, they are now suffering, and have been for years, and it is sad sight indeed to see the father slogging away trying to support the family who became accustomed to such excess.
Don't get me wrong. I want money and I want security. I even want nice things. But I hope that I never become completely dependent on money for my happiness.