Man, Willow Springs needs to work on their sales pitch. I thought all the same things after our orientation (and saw others who thought the same last year as well) but it really is a great school with fun activities schoolwide, as well as a good AAP Center.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have also heard that about the AAP centers. That there are alot of very involved parents there, compared to some base schools. Have other parents found that to be the case?

I am the room mom of a 5th grade class at a center and it is my experience that the SOME of the AAP parents have been quick to send in money if requested, but will only volunteer to help if the help involves them getting in the classroom to make sure that their snowflakes are doing better than everyone else. I have one parent who demanded in the beginning of the year that I bug the teacher about getting a group of parents to help with grading, etc.......Needless to say, I ignored her. I DID tell the teacher about it, but she laughed and said, 'No thanks.' The same Mom volunteered to help with the Holiday party only to wander around following her child and talking about him compared to other kids to anyone who would listen. Another Mom calls me bi-weekly to give me her opinion on what I should be doing and what the teacher should be teaching (because, as room mom, I have the ability to go tell the nice lady with the teaching degree what she should be doing.) The same lady demands that I call her after every e-mail I send out to discuss the contents (I don't, but I always hear from her). Then we have a Dad who cornered me after Back to School night to discuss why there were not separate groups in Math for the kids who are even smarter than the smart kids. They were new to the county, and I guess that he didn't really understand the role of the room mom?

Luckily, the majority of the parents ARE sane and I can't imagine that they are anymore whacky than other 4th grade parents. There are obviously nuts in every group, but three out of 30 isn't bad.

Anonymous wrote:While I am certain a few parents have nefarious reasons for volunteering in their child's classroom, sometimes it's a matter of being sure your child is keeping up and doing his or her work. I suppose this involves some comparison to other children but perhaps it is truly based in helping your child and making sure they are doing well in the classroom. I am fairly clueless about exactly what my child should be doing at this age but I can tell if he seems disinterested or checked out compared to others. It doesn't always have to be about getting ahead and academic one-upping the other kids.

For what it's worth I have never been witness to or even overheard the kind of behavior described by the PP. Most parents and volunteers are truly focused on helping the kids and making sure their child is doing his or her best. I am not a room parent nor inclined to be so perhaps that is an altogether different experience.

Anonymous wrote:I have also heard that about the AAP centers. That there are alot of very involved parents there, compared to some base schools. Have other parents found that to be the case?

Anonymous wrote:PP - Could you share some more about your experiences at Willow Springs? At the presentation, the general themes they kept repeating was for parents to teach multiplication tables over the summer and to help with organizational skills.

My DD is one of those highly intelligent kids, but does not do well with organization or rote memorization tasks. So I was getting the feeling that WS is more for gifted kids without "issues" - the kind that can plow through mounds of homework easily. That is not my daughter. She loves learning, reads all the time, is highly curious, learns very easily -- but she pages of arithmetic, worksheets, etc. frustrate her to no end.

At the presentation, they emphasized how much more work it would be, but didn't give any tangible examples of the quality of the work.

I hate to take a chance on switching to the Center, with all the social changes that entails, unless I have more information to go on. I talked with the principal about my concerns, but she seemed very superficial in her responses and unwilling to give me anything but a canned response.

Anonymous wrote:I'm curious which Center school presentations you all found impressive. I was at Willow Springs and I thought the presentations were not very informative, welcoming, or encouraging.