Admissions season begins!

As every family of a child who attends TBS knows, admissions season is an important time of the year. By providing tours, open houses, information nights, parent panels, and other avenues to learn about TBS, we hope to help families make informed decisions about whether their family's views on education are a good fit with how TBS works, and if our classrooms are a place where their child(ren) will flourish.

Last night was the first EBISA school fair, and this morning we hosted the first of almost a dozen tours on the University Ave campus. We review our admissions process over the summer every year, to ensure that we're maximizing our communication and improving our process; the structure of this year's tour closely followed the structure we used last year, which included a major revision from prior years. We begin with running participants through the See Think Wonder thinking routine, based on a three minute observation in a K/1 classroom. Mitch then gives an overview of our approach to teaching and learning, and our definition of being a learning community. A 45 minutes tour then follows, with parents spending the majority of time in the classroom level at which their child(ren) would enter.

The tour concludes with a 35 minute teacher panel, during which a teacher from each grade level (K/1, 2/3, 4/5, 6-8) helps answer questions from the group. The questions that prospective families ask are always fascinating, as they give us a window not only into what we haven't covered in other parts of the tour, but also into the bigger topics that they are thinking about and discussing. Questions asked this morning included:

-How does a teacher get to know a new child, and how long does that take?

-How does a teacher serve a range of children, from "high" to "low" end?

-What is the pattern of teacher tenure, and when are teachers viewed as "master teachers"?

-How does the school provide professional development for faculty?

-How does the school transition in children who have Montessori and non-Montessori backgrounds?

-How does teacher-parent communication work outside of the formal twice-yearly conferences?