Choosing a preschool or elementary school

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Choosing a preschool or elementary school

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How can a parent choose the right preschool or elementary school? In the old days, you just went to the school down the street from your house and for many people that is the absolute right choice. For others, there are a lot of choices these days. There´s magnet schools and charter schools and different kinds of preschools with different philosophies, montessori, regu amelia, academic, developmental. Here is what the research says. The kids who end up going to the developmental preschools in the long run end up more engaged with learning and have slightly higher reading scores. If it´s not the right fit for your kid, you are not going to send them to the preschool that´s not the right fit. So you want to find the right fit. You want to go visit when the school is in session both for preschool and elementary school. For elementary school, you want to have your kid shadow for as much time as the school will allow them. Get a sense of are these kids the type of kids who I like, who I want to hang out with. And you want to look at the walls. You want to see kid art and kid projects and kid activities. You want to see if there is a climate of care, if the teachers are caring and loving and know everybody´s name. You´ll know when you walk down the halls if it feels right to you as a parent and especially with kids in elementary school you have to let them walk down the halls and feel that, too. In the long, long run, it´s not going to matter as much as you think it is because they are going to find their place in whatever school you put them and any kid can thrive in just about any environment.

Watch Video: Choosing a preschool or elementary school by Denise Pope, PhD, ...

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Denise Pope, PhD

Senior Lecturer & Author

Denise Pope, PhD, is a Senior Lecturer at the Stanford University School of Education. For the past 13 years, she has specialized in student engagement, curriculum studies, qualitative research methods, and service learning. She is co-founder of Challenge Success, a research and intervention project that aims to reduce unhealthy pressure on youth and champions a broader vision of youth success. Challenge Success is an expanded version of the SOS: Stressed-Out Students project that Dr. Pope founded and directed from 2003-2008. She lectures nationally on parenting techniques and pedagogical strategies to increase student health, engagement with learning, and integrity. Her book, Doing School: How We Are Creating a Generation of Stressed Out, Materialistic, and Miseducated Students was awarded Notable Book in Education by the American School Board Journal, 2001. Dr. Pope is a three time recipient of the Stanford University School of Education Outstanding Teacher and Mentor Award.  Prior to teaching at Stanford, Dr. Pope taught high school English in Fremont, CA and college composition and rhetoric courses at Santa Clara University. She lives in Los Altos, CA with her husband and three children.

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