Blog Credo

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

H.L. Mencken

Friday, September 13, 2013

A Private School Education

Thing Two goes to a private school in the woody hills of western Connecticut.  Posh, coat and ties, you get the picture.

But I want to share the "newsletter" I just got from his teacher after the first week of classes:

Students who earn less than 100% on this test will attempt it again the following week. Those who answer all questions correctly will move on to 5's, 6's, and 7's. Students will be able to master the times tables at their own pace.

II Form students will begin their first book group this coming week....All students have their own unique strengths, weaknesses, likes and dislikes in what and how they read. In order to make this process accessible to all, I have selected a book that has a reasonably straight forward plot, and has situations and language that should be familiar to all....The reading program in the II Form will be a mix of books that students chose and that I assign.

I collect an individualized list of words that your child has misspelled in their writing during the week and ask that they write one sentence for each word every day. My belief is that few of us are "natural" spellers, but we can all compensate for that by proofreading and looking up words we are unsure of. I model this behavior in class with students and we will be discussing strategies for finding the correct spelling of words throughout the year.

This guy isn't teaching a class.  He's teaching individual kids.

Which is only possible in a small class.

Just saying.

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