Escaping millions of school district houses and changing 4 schools in 6 years, I summarized 3 suggestions for choosing a school in elementary school
The importance of choosing a school in primary school for parents is self-evident. Under the premise of zero trial and error, how can you choose a school that is more suitable for your child? What are the factors for school selection? After the father changed four schools for his child in the United States, he gave three elements for choosing a school: distance, discipline and clubs.
Wen 丨 Han Dad in the United States edited 丨 May
Three elements of primary school selection
In the past few days, there is a post on the North American Chinese Forum that is particularly popular, the title is called: Shanghai Kindergarten Elementary Offer, Einstein can't get a few when he comes.
That's the following article:
The story is about a mother who posted a happy news on the Internet and posted offers from 4 schools that her child received.
I didn't know that I thought it was 4 Ivy League schools, but I was shocked when I looked closely.
It turned out to be a "small offer for kindergarten"...
Recently, facing further education, the background has also received a lot of questions about primary school choice. Like what:
How to choose between public and private schools?
Do you want to work hard and fight a famous school for your baby?
How can you tell if a school is good or bad?
……
Every time I see these problems, I suddenly have an urge in my heart.
Regarding elementary school choice, I want to talk about this topic so much! Because Hanhan was in elementary school for six years, we attended a total of 4 schools.
My mother often laughed at me and said: The ancients were "Meng's mother three migrations", and we are "Han Dad changed to four schools"!
When I first chose a school for Hanhan, I didn't have much experience, but after the entire six years of Hanhan Primary School, I changed four schools before and after, and I also had more experience in choosing schools.
I will talk about "primary school selection" today, and it should be noted that the school selection standards of secondary schools will be slightly different from primary schools!
As far as I am concerned, there are 3 most critical elements in primary school choice: distance, discipline and clubs.
Why do you say that, and listen to me slowly.
The first element: distance
The first school we chose was a public school, which was on the school rating board with a score of 10.
Public schools in the United States will have a grading system, the maximum score is 10 points, the higher the score, the better the school. And 10 points means that the quality of teaching in this school is quite good!
We went there for 2 years, but then due to moving, our new home was a bit far from the school.
It takes 9 kilometers to drive from home to school one way, and 15 minutes without traffic jams.
The quality of teaching in this school is still good, and the teachers are good to the students, so I combined with my mother, thinking that I would be farther away, anyway, I would travel more every day.
So, although we moved, in order to go to a good school, I had to drive 9 kilometers early every morning to take my baby to school.
I went on like this for 1 month, and I found out that the problem came...
The first problem encountered is that children can grind!
Especially for children in the lower grades of primary school, time management is not so good, and they have to urge half a day every day when they go out.
Usually the normal school time will be tight, but now it is necessary to leave 15 minutes earlier, which means that you have to get up 15 minutes earlier than usual, which is even tighter.
Every day I send him to school, it feels like a race against time... Too much to worry about!
The second problem encountered is that there will be traffic jams on the road!
9 km away, it doesn't seem very far, 15 minutes by car. But the above one is the ideal situation, normal conditions will be traffic jams, and you will also encounter red lights!
Once there is a traffic jam on the way to and from school, or there are a few more red lights on the road, the time is completely uncontrollable!
Therefore, in order to ensure that children can go to school on time, we do not simply leave 15 minutes early, on the contrary, we will leave at least 30 minutes in advance, just to ensure that there is enough time on the road.
You see, this time around, it takes more than 1 hour more than other children to walk every day.
Originally, the child usually has more after-school interest classes and homework, and the time is very tight, so the extra 1 hour on the road is a waste.
Therefore, I insisted on it for 2 months, and I changed schools for Hanhan without hesitation!
The inspiration for me from this experience is that when choosing a school, you must consider the distance and the convenience of transportation. Even if some schools are good, but they are far from home, and it takes 1 hour to go back and forth every day, I advise you to be cautious!
The second element: discipline
The second elementary school near my house was a public school with a slightly lower grade, but it also scored 9.
At first glance, I felt pretty good, and this score was a little bit worse than the full score, and I thought it was good.
Moreover, the teaching philosophy of this school is - "happy education"! Happy education is good, very American, let children learn in joy. This is what prompted me to decide to transfer Hanhan.
After 2 months here, I noticed something was wrong. Because the good study habits that Han developed before suddenly disappeared little by little...
The simplest is writing.
The teacher of the previous school was very emphasized that the child's handwriting was neat, and if the homework handed in was not neat, the teacher would criticize it. And this school does not make requirements at all.
As a result, Hanhan went home every day, quickly "drawn" his homework like a "ghost drawing", finished work, and played with his classmates.
In the past, teachers would emphasize going home to read Raz for 15 minutes every day, and this school did not require it.
This also led to a state of complete liberation after class, and the reading habit that I had developed to go home every day was also gone.
And this school has very low discipline requirements for children.
Usually, when the teacher is in class, there are students chatting in whispers below, and the teacher does not interfere.
This leads to the fact that every time there are 2 or 30 students in the class, only the first few children listen well, and many children in the back are in a state of desertion.
No wonder, I have seen many comments from American parents on the reviews of this school before, meaning that this school is very "free" and very "have fun".
And after Hanhan sent it over, I learned the meaning behind this "freedom" and "have fun". At the expense of study discipline and good study habits!
American parents do not value these, and as a Chinese parent, I hope that my children have a good study habit, which is the prerequisite for learning homework.
Therefore, later, I also changed the school for Hanhan without hesitation.
The inspiration from this experience is: choose a school, you must pay attention to the discipline of this school, if the management is very loose, usually the school discipline, learning atmosphere is not very good, this school is better not to consider!
The third element: school clubs
The third school is a private school, and the previous two public schools were completely free, but private schools need to pay and the price is not low.
I thought there would be a lot more content taught in private schools than in public schools.
But in fact, whether it is a public school or a private school, the school is actually similar in terms of in-class teaching.
Because everyone is teaching based on the curriculum standards, and the primary school curriculum standards are so much content, it is difficult to go anywhere.
Therefore, the private school we go to will only have higher requirements for the children, usually arrange more homework, and learn more academic content ahead of time.
I think it's similar to my school when I was a kid, so I'm quite satisfied.
But something happened once that changed my opinion.
Our school doesn't have any extracurricular clubs, so I sign up for interest classes outside of school.
This includes football, I signed up for a football children's club for Hanhan, our club is very amateur, how far is it amateur? That is, the coaches are all the parents themselves.
If you look at the picture below, I am a coach and guiding the baby to play football.
I have a bunch of kids with me, and I usually have a lot of fun. But when they played a game one day, they met a team that was super powerful, and they were drunk 4 or 5 balls at once.
I was surprised, why are people so powerful?
Later, I learned that the team came from a club in a certain school, and that school offered many clubs, and the football club was particularly famous.
Once I passed by the school and went in for a little tour. Just seeing that green stadium was shocking, it was really amazing!
Later, when the children grew older, I found that the evaluation of a school is mainly based on the clubs of the school!
If a school provides a wealth of clubs, it shows that the school emphasizes diversified development, not just dead reading.
And the school where Hanhan is now studying, there is not a club after class, and every day is a cycle of classes, homework, and exams.
Therefore, I later transferred to Hanhan, I hope that the child will diversify and develop, and I don't want him to become a "nerd" who can only read!
What inspired me from this experience was:
When choosing a school, be sure to pay attention to the clubs of this school. If the choice of clubs here is rich and there is a direction that your child likes, it means that this school will emphasize more diversified development, and children will have more fun learning here!
This is how we experience changing schools four times in 6 years of elementary school.
We have seen many types of primary schools. There are those who pursue happy education, those who prefer exam-oriented education, and those who pay attention to extracurricular clubs...
Each school has its own characteristics, it is difficult to say whether it is good or bad, the key is whether the style of this school meets the needs of the child.
As far as my personal feelings are concerned, the most important thing to choose a school for your child is three elements:
The first, school distance and ease of pick-up, which determines how much time you spend on the road.
Second, the quality of school discipline and learning atmosphere, which determines whether children will develop good study habits.
Third, whether the school provides rich clubs, this determines that children are not blindly reading and can diversify development.
I hope that these three elements of mine can help children choose a school with a better direction! ^_^