The Lowdown on L.A. Private Elementary School Tours by Alice

Photo: Flickr/Brad Flickinger
Photo: Flickr/Brad Flickinger

If it’s your first time through the private school gauntlet, the tours are everything. As a family you are trying to make a decision that could impact the next six to twelve years of your lives and no other form of reconnaissance replaces boots on the ground. Even if you’ve seen the brochures, or have driven by a particular school countless times and even if all your best friend’s kids go there and they’ve given all the inside scoop, it still doesn’t replace the tour.

For me the campus was never exactly what I pictured. No matter how eloquent my friends were, or how well photographed a campus was, really walking around it was irreplaceable. It’s seeing the kids and their enthusiasm or lack there of. It’s feeling the buzz in the air, the way and where they eat, where the backpacks get tossed, the lockers, the fields, the size of the campus, how it’s maintained. All of these little vignettes come together to paint a picture. For most of us, it’s a feeling we get, that out kid would be happy, or not, in any given school.

It’s also really the best time to get your questions out. The “evening” that many of the schools sponsor specifically for Q & A’s with kids often feels staged and overly prepared. As my friend Karen said about one evening in particular, “The kids felt like they’d been too coached. The headmaster at the time stood off to the side. If questions went in a direction he wasn’t comfortable with, he’d jump in and steer things in another direction. “

Particularly if you get lucky and get a student led tour, even if your student guide is extremely well prepared and rehearsed, you’re going to have a chance for real interaction and get a more candid insights into what your guide loves about his or her school. For that reason alone, I’m a fan of student led tours.

However, many tours of K-8 schools are done by admissions officers and that’s still a good opportunity not only to see the school and ask questions, but to see if it’s a personality match. Don’t panic if your child is a total dolt through whole tour. Admissions people have seen it all. For most kindergarten classes they are looking more at the family than the child (assuming the child is not an outlier).

There are some schools that are so exclusive it’s hard to get a tour. I tried to tour John Thomas Dye and Curtis for my son, but I waited until September to call and apparently I was too late!. If you don’t get on the tour/application list over the summer at those schools you’re out, and there’s no getting back in.

Also buyer beware. Most schools do a good job of touring and your little one may fall in love. My son fell in love with Oakwood on the tour, but I had an early sense Oakwood wasn’t in love with us and I was right. He didn’t get in, so don’t let a five-year old’s emotions play too big a role in your decision making and what eggs you are putting in what baskets. The family and school have to be a match and that really isn’t going to be determined by the tour. You will learn things. You may decide a school is or isn’t right, but a lot of other things have to line up between the tour and an acceptance letter.

Final note, one woman I know got pretty offended when she was being toured by an admissions director only to look around and see the Headmaster touring another family. Why them and not me she thought? The truth is there could be a million good reasons, including they are his relatives. Let it go and enjoy the tour. It really is about you. It’s about your chance to see the place and get the feel for it and then all the other posturing, planning, applying, interviewing, waiting and suffering can take place.

God Speed.

 

Mother of three, Alice attended east coast private schools as a child and has been in the private school world as a parent for nearly twenty years. Her kids attended Mirman for elementary, then Harvard-Westlake and Brentwood for high school, with one still to go. She is a writer working in film, TV and for various magazines such as Family Fun, Wondertime, Glamour and Brides.

 

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An L.A. Private School Kid’s Very Unproductive Summer

What's your kid doing this summer?  Photo: NASA
What’s your kid doing this summer?
Photo: NASA

Not sure about you, but it’s mid-July and I think I have to chalk this summer up to failure. My poor L.A. private school son is becoming totally uneducated as the days race unproductively by.

I talk to his classmate’s mothers and I know I’ve failed. His friends are in “coding” camp, or studying programming at UCLA. Or they are working out their artistic muscles doing theatre, studying music or painting. Others still are being tutored twice a week in preparation for fifth grade.

Those who aren’t so systematically being educated, seem to be on various educational trips, seeing Washington DC, or other important geographical locations in Europe or India.

In contrast, my kid is getting a lot of TV watching in, becoming more proficient at Googling inappropriate things and improving his Play Station 3 skills. He’s also learned Twitter. I’m so proud.

In my defense, I’d like to say he does read with his father and plays a lot of baseball. He has pretty much summarily rejected all camp as cruel and unusal punshiment. Even the baseball camps are too much for him any more. He wants to be “FREE!”

A few choice quotes from my poetic son: “I work all year, this is my time now!” “Parents send their kids to camps because they don’t like their kids! Don’t you like me?” “No more learning! I learned all year long. Enough!!”

He’s hard to argue with. But the $26K a year we spend on a private school education in L.A. is also apparently not enough. All the other parents seem to have gotten the memo early that more summer education would be required in order to succeed. In truth, I got the memo but ignored it. Now here it is mid-July and I’m scared. What if this summer of idle behavior and lazy days gets him so off course that we never recover? What if 5th grade is the end of him, because he’s the kid who forgets how to do math or spell his name?

I’m prone to hyperbole and am known to be a little dramatic, but the underlying fear is real. Everyone has it. None of those kids begged to go to “coding camp” or to brush up on their pre algebra. It’s just another lap in the rat race that we willing enter when we sign up for a private school education.

I know what I should have done. I’ve done some of those kind of camps before. We all know the list… Those places and offerings that will enlighten and educate our kids. This year I just boldly ignored it.

 

Mother of three, Alice attended east coast private schools as a child and has been in the private school world as a parent for nearly twenty years. Her kids attended Mirman for elementary, then Harvard-Westlake and Brentwood for high school, with one still to go. She is a writer working in film, TV and for various magazines such as Family Fun, Wondertime, Glamour and Brides.

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Guest Blogger Alice: The Dreaded Parent Interview

keep-calm-and-eat-chocolate

 

So you’re applying to private elementary schools and you’ve managed to actually get a date for a tour and/or interview  (which for some schools means you called months in advance and already jumped through some hoops), which generally means both you and your child will be interviewed. You’re a grown up and have survived job interviews and talked banks into loaning you money, so this should be a piece of cake.  “You aren’t nervous,” you tell yourself and pretend the new outfit you bought is for some other reason, but the truth is as much as we are prepping our kid by begging and bribing them to behave for just one hour, we know that we also have to pull it off.

 

In fact, when you’re applying for a kindergarten spot in the competitive L.A. private school market, it may even be more about the family than it is about the child.   I remember the butterflies.  I remember trying to look like I had money, but not so much that I was pretending to be a big donor.  I remember wondering if it’s better to look like working mom, or a stay at home mom, (as if I could fake it one way or another).  I remember frantically searching a school’s web site to see if I could think of at least one or two “intelligent” questions to ask, and then trying to memorize those questions.

 

I decided to go to a source and ask an admissions director at one of these schools, to sit with me and anonymously give me some insights into what they are hoping to get out of the parent interview

 

Alice: What’s the single most important thing you are looking for in a parent interview?

 

Admissions Director:  For parent interviews I want to hear in their voice that they are supportive of their child and will be of the school.  In other words, once they put their kid in the school, I want to know they will trust the school to do what it’s supposed to and not get in the way.

 

Alice: You mean?

 

Admissions Director: (laughing) Get in the teacher’s faces.

 

Alice: Is there a tip off that makes you know you may be talking to a difficult parent?

 

Admissions Director: Yes.  When they start getting really pushy, questioning the curriculum before they even spend time here.  “If my child does this or that, will you do this or that?”  They are always seeking more and more.  It’s not many parents, but you do find them.

 

Alice: What would your biggest tip be for a parent going into a parent interview?

 

Admissions Director:  For them to realize that not every school is necessarily a perfect fit for their child.  They may think it’s a fit because of the status of the school, or whatever, but they need to understand that a child has to be socially and emotionally ready for any school they’re applying to.   Some parents want to push them further than they can actually handle.  Know the boundaries of your child and what’s good for them.

 

Alice: Can you give me an example?

 

Admissions Director:  Often the child is just too young and not ready for what a school is going to ask from them.

 

Alice: I’m just curious, does it mater what you wear to an interview?

 

Admissions Director:  No.  I mean, some parents dress up and that’s nice, but what’s on the outside doesn’t matter.  It’s the way they present themselves verbally in conversation that’s more important.

 

Alice: What if one of the parents doesn’t show up?   Does that matter?

 

Admissions Director:  It’s not a big deal for one interview, but if dad, for example, doesn’t show up, I’ll reach out at some point.

 

Alice: You’d like to lay eyes on both parents?

 

Admissions Director nods.

 

Alice: So any final tip for us parents?

 

Admissions Director: Parents should do their homework about the schools they are applying to, try to talk to other families and get the pros and cons and have questions.

 

Alice: Sure, but what kinds of questions?

 

Admissions Director: Anything, about their financial commitments, what after school programs are offered, what transportation, parent involvement on campus?   What high schools the kids matriculate to?

 

Alice: And finally?

 

Admissions Director: Come in with an open mind.  Before deciding if this is or isn’t the right place for your child.  Even if you come in thinking it is right, listen and make sure before you apply.

——

My own final thought is this:  I once was in a group interview situation for one of the most of prestigious K-12 schools in the city and they had about eight to ten parents around a large table and opened it up to questions.  It started with one person asking how many letters from board members of the school would be too much to include in the application.  I believe the officer responded with one is likely enough and then another hand went up and a parent asked, “Following up on that, is it obnoxious…?”  I didn’t even have to hear the end of the question, because if you start with, “Is it obnoxious?”, it obviously will be obnoxious.  Sure enough: “Is it obnoxious to have someone from Clinton’s Cabinet write letters recommending our family?”   Clinton at that time was President.  I can’t say how the admissions director took that, but everyone else in the room including me, rolled their eyes.  So my personal thought would be, try not to be obnoxious.

 

Mother of three, Alice attended east coast private schools as a child and has been in the private school world as a parent for nearly twenty years.  Her kids attended Mirman for elementary, then Harvard-Westlake and Brentwood for high school, with one still to go.  She is a writer working in film, TV and for various magazines such as Family Fun, Wondertime, Glamour and Brides. 

 

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