Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Could be just lucky, but all outstanding teachers so far in every single subject at TJMS. Director of after-school activities is awesome. Feel the school is well run and well organized.
Thankful to have the IB grading system (not affected by APS' "standard based grading"). Most languages offered of all MS - as far as we know, starting in 6th.

Not true! Formatives are not graded under the IB system. Please do more research into the consequences of this.

Anonymous wrote:Could be just lucky, but all outstanding teachers so far in every single subject at TJMS. Director of after-school activities is awesome. Feel the school is well run and well organized.
Thankful to have the IB grading system (not affected by APS' "standard based grading"). Most languages offered of all MS - as far as we know, starting in 6th.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m sure there is a bright cadre of kids at Jefferson but there are way more kids on balance who are going to have needs just due to demographics. Hamm is going to have — again on balance — a much larger group of very bright, very motivated kids. It’s my belief that kids are some of the strongest influences on each other and while you could find your way into that group at Jefferson for sure you are much more likely to have that opportunity at Hamm plus the overall dynamic is going to be less needs driven.

It's my belief that Hamm exceptionalism is tiresome. Some of us don't want to buy or live in N Arlington. We have work commutes to manage, family budgets to live within and neighborhood connections we value too much to give them up by moving north. My TJMS students have a large enough peer group of "very bright, very motivated" kids to rub shoulders with at school. Believe it or not, some of these kids aren't from well-off families. Heaven help us, they're from hardscrabble recent immigrant families where academic success is paramount. Their parents may have been professionals in Afghanistan, Syria, Venezuela or Mongolia, but some of them are janitors or Lyft drivers in VA for now. Needs-driven peers who put nose to the grindstone and don't compete to have the snazziest stuff seem like good influences on my spoiled UMC children.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Math options situation is the same at TJMS as Arlington wide. What's unique about Jefferson?

*School uses the indoor track they share with the city rec center in the same building for PE.
*School has an unusually nice auditorium/stage, again shared with city.
*School offers more languages than the other APS middle schools, and from 6th grade Arabic, Chinese, Spanish, French, ASL, Russian and German on demand on-line. Unusually advanced students can have their own on-line classes in 8th grade in any of these languages.
*8th grade geography for all in 8th grade due to IB Middle Years curriculum, students can take advanced geog for HS credit.
*Particularly good band, chorus and orchestra due to strong music director, "Ms. T."

Yes, more poor kids than several of the AP neighborhood middle schools but good discipline and stable teaching force manage the poor kids well enough for us. Only around 1/4 of the student at Jefferson are zoned for Washington-Liberty, but the group includes many high performers academically. Moreover, other strong students often try to lottery/test into IB studies at W-L. In a nutshell, the IBD program at W-L keeps a good cohort of strong TJMS students together for HS.

Seems like many would prefer Wakefield now given how large W-L is getting. Nicer building, too.

Anonymous wrote:I’m sure there is a bright cadre of kids at Jefferson but there are way more kids on balance who are going to have needs just due to demographics. Hamm is going to have — again on balance — a much larger group of very bright, very motivated kids. It’s my belief that kids are some of the strongest influences on each other and while you could find your way into that group at Jefferson for sure you are much more likely to have that opportunity at Hamm plus the overall dynamic is going to be less needs driven.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We have a 6th grader and an 8th grader at TJMS and like it just fine. My kids both play wind instruments seriously and think that the band director is terrific. She organizes a band members' field trip to an amusement park in the spring. We like the diversity - my kids have sweet friends whose families immigrated from Asia, the Middle East, Central America. These kids are good student and study buddies. We don't hear about discipline problems. The 8th grader takes intensified core classes across the board, for science, English, geography for HS credit, algebra II. When my older child was admitted to a competitive STEM summer sleep-away camp the spring that ran during the last week of school, she was excused from school that week by admins not only with zero fuss, but with encouragement to go enjoy the camp. Friendly, well-run school.

That is really interesting about Algebra II. I did not realize that APS offered Algebra II in middle school.

Algebra II is not on the middle school pathway for math. They might offer it to kids under special circumstances, but it’s definitely not the norm.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Math options situation is the same at TJMS as Arlington wide. What's unique about Jefferson?

*School uses the indoor track they share with the city rec center in the same building for PE.
*School has an unusually nice auditorium/stage, again shared with city.
*School offers more languages than the other APS middle schools, and from 6th grade Arabic, Chinese, Spanish, French, ASL, Russian and German on demand on-line. Unusually advanced students can have their own on-line classes in 8th grade in any of these languages.
*8th grade geography for all in 8th grade due to IB Middle Years curriculum, students can take advanced geog for HS credit.
*Particularly good band, chorus and orchestra due to strong music director, "Ms. T."

Yes, more poor kids than several of the AP neighborhood middle schools but good discipline and stable teaching force manage the poor kids well enough for us. Only around 1/4 of the student at Jefferson are zoned for Washington-Liberty, but the group includes many high performers academically. Moreover, other strong students often try to lottery/test into IB studies at W-L. In a nutshell, the IBD program at W-L keeps a good cohort of strong TJMS students together for HS.

Seems like many would prefer Wakefield now given how large W-L is getting. Nicer building, too.