The three grade levels that have weekend visits are the Early Childhood Campus, the K/1 program, and the 6th grade program. At the Early Childhood Campus, families will be coming on Sunday the 13th, between 9-11. These young children, some of them new to school for the first time, are paired up 1:1 with a faculty member, who spends 20 minutes engaging with the child in carefully selected works and activities that provide data on the child's physical, cognitive, emotional, and social development. Parents and administrators have a chance to talk outside the classrooms during this time, and talk about everything from the child to the setting to the program, and more. At the K/1 level, students will visit campus on Saturday the 12th between 9-10:30. This year we are expecting 34 students; we'll split them into two equal groups and send them into the K/1 classrooms for a morning of activities and play that, like at the ECC, are designed to help us gather information about the children on areas such as their gross and fine motor control, collaborative play, and early literacy and academic skills such as letter recognition and pattern making. Julianne will be hosting an art making class for parents in the atelier during this time, and current parent ambassadors will be available in the Depot for conversation about their experiences at TBS. At the 6th grade level, our 4/5 and 6th teachers will lead the students through a 2.5 hour session on Saturday the 12th that includes a powerful self-image activity called Grow Your Garden from Positive Discipline, math and language arts classes that will engage the kids socially as well as intellectually, and artistic and team-building activities. As you can imagine, the time and energy put into designing these visits - and the process of discussing the data that we gather during them, as well as reviewing the files of all of the children - is a major undertaking for faculty.
Why do we hold weekend visits for ECC, K/1, and 6th? For the youngest students, because schooling can be so new, giving them time to have the space to themselves helps build a feeling of comfort. At the K/1 and 6th grade levels, it's simply a matter of pragmatics - the impact of 30 students visiting the class over the course of the nine days we do child visits would mean averaging more than 3 student applicant visitors a day for two school weeks! Because the 2/3, 4/5, and 7/8 levels are not natural transition points, we tend to have fewer applicants at those levels, so having students visit in the classrooms for half the day is much more manageable. Applicants not only get to experience life in a TBS classroom, they also eat snack and/or lunch, and begin to forge social connections through the structures of the work as well as time at lunch and recess with host "buddies".
At some schools, the teaching faculty do not participate in the admissions process in the deep way that they do at TBS. Instead, the administration hires outside teachers to come in and run the assessment day, and makes the admissions decisions without consulting teachers. We believe that by including teachers in every step of the process, from reading files to working 1:1 with student applicants, our faculty is empowered in the process, and thus feels ownership of the school in a unique way. They are also able to begin to form the teacher-student connections that are so important to the work that happens in the classrooms. When a child shows up at a new school in the fall, the presence of even one familiar face can make a world of difference in how s/he transitions into the day.
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