I read with interest the article “After challenging year, new Children’s School chief melds past and future,” [News, June 12] which was about the new leadership at The Children’s School (TCS).
When I was in fifth grade, my parents enrolled me in TCS because they were intrigued by the creative environment they read about on the website. However, as a rising senior at Oak Park and River Forest High School, I can say that TCS did not prepare me academically. They did not explicitly teach science or history, and I also missed a lot of the middle-school math that my high school classmates got in public schools.
For example, I only received about 30 minutes of math instruction in sporadic sessions a few times a week (as opposed to the daily, hour-long math instructions offered in public school). When I got to high school, I lacked basic math skills like how to do long division or add fractions.
When I collected data, unofficially, by interviewing a dozen previous TCS students, 50% of them said that they believed the school prepared them for high school, and 50% said they think it did not. The 50% who had a positive experience still said they never felt challenged in math or reading.
I believe this is because TCS teachers are not held professionally accountable. When I looked on the school’s website, I didn’t find teachers’ educational backgrounds or mention of their credentials. In fact, when I searched the Illinois Department of Education (ISBE) website this May I only found Illinois teaching credentials for one of the teachers.
Not only did the school not prepare me for high school, in my opinion it didn’t live up to the values of progressive education, which is supposed to provide core subjects while challenging students and adapting to their needs and interests. TCS did not do this for me. It stole three years of my education and caused me mental and academic struggles that may last me throughout my life.
Hopefully the new head of school will prevent this from happening to other students.
Maya Marobella
Oak Park