When should academic centered schooling begin? This has been the question I have been grappling with for weeks. My daughter is not quite 3 and was accepted to a private dual language school for this coming fall where academics and inquiry-based learning is at the heart of what they do. This past January is also when we switched her to an “English school” where a play curriculum is at the heart of how children’s curiosity is nurtured. She is emotionally and socially thriving there and learning English fast, hence our interest to switch her to a Spanish school as soon as possible.
As I have gone to several observations at the dual language school I cannot help but compare the difference in the ways children are taught to think and socialize between the two schools. At the dual language school children are definitely being asked and taught how to be free thinkers, but at my daughters current child development center she gets to do what 2+ year olds love to do: get their hands dirty and have options of when and how they want to play no matter what time of day it is. In other words, if they want to paint all day, painting all day it is whether they are inside or out on the playground. I am not sure I am willing to give that playful and creative atmosphere up, yet. I am not sure she is either.
One of the struggles I have had on my search for the ideal foreign language school is finding one where there is both a strong foreign language program, yet flexibility in the options children have to learn. A trend I started to notice, at least in my city, was that the foreign language schools were stricter with children’s behavior. For example, it was impossible to find a Spanish immersion or dual language Montessori-based school. One has recently opened up, and I have yet to visit, although it is far from our home. In other words, the options are definitely limited.
I also started to notice how many parents seemed sold on a school based on the reputation it has and are willing to leave a hefty deposit not having visited a single classroom! Maybe I am over analyzing our school options, but what I have concluded that a parents main concern should be, how will the current school meet the needs of my child from an academic perspective, socially and emotionally?
For example, I have learned that my child learns best in a setting that offers lots of socialization and options. It is in those settings where she seems to be developing her intellectual curiosity and emotional well. That is to say, as parents we should be concerned about our children’s overall academic, social, emotional, linguistic and psychological development and in which context those elements are likely to prosper. A challenging task but one I have decided to continue to try and fulfill even if it means deferring our acceptance to a highly sought out school until our daughter is a little older.
Have you grappled with a similar decision? If so, how did you decide on what kind of school to choose for your child? In other words, were you willing to give up a certain characteristic of a school for another?
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This is a good topic…thanks for posting. I’ve always had much more limited options, as we haven’t lived in larger cities often. When I lived in Raleigh for awhile when my daughter was 2, I couldn’t afford the nicer bilingual Montessori programs or they were booked for the year, or when I did find one, it was a 45-min commute one-way and was only for 1/2 day. The commute would have made it impossible for me to get any work done. So, I chose another school that I could afford and really regretted it. My daughter still talks about how much she disliked it there. There was one Spanish-immersion school she could have gone to, but it wouldn’t have filled my daughter’s advanced academic needs. But perhaps I would have been happier with her there in hindsight.
I haven’t had any success finding a bilingual program. Thus, with more topics than I can count (including foreign languages), I try to fill the gap at home. I’m not fluent in Spanish, but we use it some every day. I noticed the small bit of exposure to Spanish she gets at her current morning-only preschool (they watch Muzzy at snack time), has increased her Spanish usage quite a bit at home though. The new preschool she is starting in the fall does a little German, no Spanish. Sometimes I feel like I can’t win on the language front.
But, that said, she’s further along in foreign languages than most kids and we’ll just keep working at it as best we can. I can’t find a Spanish playgroup either, so my next step is to find a tutor. One day I’m sure it will all work out!
Hi Becky,
I think we will always have a gap to fill when it comes to what we, as parents, want for our children, right? I guess my biggest struggle is which gaps do I want to fill? Which can I fill? Sometimes I think I am the only parent that over thinks these things and to some degree I know more cause I was a teacher etc etc….who knows??? Right now I am just hoping that we have made the right decision. Time will tell.
Looking for the perfect school is always hard. When we had to look for a daycare for my son when he was almost 3, I wanted to find something nurturing, clean, fun, warm, and enriching. I also wanted to find one that was bilingual. I visited a few, and I did find a bilingual daycare which are very hard to find. However, I opted for a Montessori daycare because it met all of my other requirements.
My son will start kindergarten this year and we were again looking for the perfect school for him. We looked at the schools from all sides, and the language aspect as one of the many other important factors in the decision. All immersion schools in my area are lottery based, so we had to decide between schools we got in. After looking at all aspects that we consider important for our son, we decided to go with the Chinese immersion school and not the Spanish one. I know I will have to make the extra effort to keep up with their Spanish language learning.
But to be honest, at almost 3, the academic aspect was not as important for me as everything else. Although my son has learned so much at his Montessori school, he has done it at his pace and had fun while doing it. This was an added bonus.
What helped me decide was to think about where I think my son will excel naturally and which areas I think he’ll likely need extra encouragement.
Some learning environments gently push children into more creative thinking. Other learning environments gently push children into being able to really focus and get things done (aka discipline). Some schools excel at helping kids easily make new friends, for example if you have few or none of the same kids in your class from one year to the next. And, some schools’ strong suit is being a bulwark of strong input / life lived in a minority language.
For me I felt things like my son’s creativity, friendliness or organizational habits come pretty naturally to him with some encouragement from home, and maybe not so much in need of the school to augment. The thing I want the school to really help with, something I cannot give him at home, is a circle of peers and adults on a daily basis who are also bilingual. My son is not just bilingual — he’s “mixed” — his father and I come from very different backgrounds. He spends more time with me as his mother and my culture is the majority here. And that majority culture is unfortunately often strongly negative toward this minority culture.
So I feel it is extra important to reinforce my son’s sense of identity and closeness with his father’s, the minority, culture / language. I want him to be proud and comfortable in his own skin. Therefore, I feel it’s best for him to be 8 years in a school surrounded by other bilingual children and adults.
Oops, correction, 9 years.