hodie's new school

so, after 4 fine years at MLC hodie will be going transferring to our neighborhood school Bridlemile in the fall. we decided this for a host of reasons, and we're pretty excited about it, although i must admit i'll sort of miss the bragging rights associated with being the parent of an MLC childling.

turns out though, that the academtic rating on this neighborhood school is actually better than MLC (which is a magnet) and more than one of the parents i met today had actually pulled their kid out of montessori/private school and applied for transfer into Bridlemile since it's such a good school. sweet!

so, sacrificing nothing in terms of quality of education, we are gaining the following:

1) neighborhood kids & activities. the nature of the magnet is that the kids come from all quadrants of the town and usually don't live near one another. nice for a varied demographic, not nice for playdates.

2) more "authentic" school experience. as much as i loved the touchy feel-y child centered education model for her when she was a kindergartener, the older she gets, the more structure i think she needs. not to mention the concept of grades (which they don't do at MLC) and a less insular social model. moreover they are getting ready to stick her class into 2 years of split grade, which we did not love the last time we did it.

3) SCHOOL BUS! WOOT! i have been driving her back and forth to school for 4 years. i'm tired.

so, on the whole, we're happy! and today was the open house for the school so they could come over and meet their new teacher. i thought after being so used to MLC, the least i could do was let hodie have one day to look around the new school and meet her new teacher so it wasn't completely overwhelming come fall.

and so i sat in my sub-adult sized chair in the library while she went off to meet her new teacher. i spoke with a whole new set of highly-entitled snarky parents (not leaving them behind apparently), and waited for her to come back and give me her impressions.

they had the whole experience set up to try and ease the kids into the transition. one step in this process was each of the outgoing 4th graders from Miss Good's class wrote a letter to an incoming member. you know, give them a little inside scoop, some insight into the 4th grade experience. well, what follows was the letter for hodie. (spelling and tense errors are those of the author and reproduced faithfully)

June 6th, 2008

Dear New 4th grader,

HI! My name is (not actually going to post the name). I'm 10 years olf and I was in Miss Good's class. I don't know how I did it but all I now is that it was torchure with Miss Good.

When I found out I was in Miss Good's class I was freaking out!!! I didn't kno what it would be like. I heard so much thinks about her like "she is the worst teacher ever!" or "She is SO Mean!!" And alot more.

Just to be nice I'm going to give you some tips on how to survive Miss Good's class. One is do NOT I repet do NOT turn in eney thing late!! She hats that. The second one is if you arnt paying attention she will get MAD!!! And the last one is never LIE!! If you do sometimes she knows it. Thank you for reading this note.

Sincerely, (not actually going to post the name)

bwahahahahahahaha. ahem. not exactly the most reassuring note. one must consider the source i suppose, but hodie is now totally paranoid that her new teacher is a tyrant with a lie detector embedded in her head. so, that's awesome.

can't wait til fall!!