EDUCATION MATTERS—SANFORD SCHOOL'S PRIVATE SCHOOL BLOG

The college search process can seem daunting even in the best of times. This year, there are even more questions and unknowns for parents, as well as for admissions officers and college counselors. With an open mind and a degree of patience, you can still navigate this milestone with your students.

Here are six tips to guide you through the college process:

The relationship between home and school is pivotal to the success of your child. As parent-teacher conferences are announced, the way you approach this relationship can help shape important outcomes for your child. It is important to bring patience, understanding, and compassion to the conversation, especially now during the pandemic. Although conferences will be virtual, the content of the meeting is just as meaningful and essential. Use this unique one-on-one time to explore how you can support the “formal” learning process and get a fresh perspective on your child’s development. Planning ahead can help you establish a solid partnership with your child’s teacher.

Here are a few tips to make your parent-teacher conference more productive:

During the pandemic, most schools have asked families to make their own lunches for their children. If you’ve been making the same old lunches every week, then it’s time to spice things up a bit! Below are three ways to pump up the fun and the nutrition the next time you pack your child’s lunch.

When you’re pursuing a college preparatory education, the academic courses of math, science, English, history, and a modern language are pretty much set in stone. You may have some flexibility around what novel you’ll read for a classroom book club or what project you’ll do for the science fair, but if you really want to stretch your wings in terms of making choices, you can turn to electives and clubs. Find out why electives are an important part of your child's education.

Private school admissions can be tricky, and in 2020 the process is all the more confusing. Yet while the world may be on pause, your child’s education shouldn’t wait. Admission offices are finding new ways to connect with families and prospective students this year, providing myriad opportunities for parents to learn about and engage with their schools.

When searching for a school, academic rigor and extracurricular activities are important, but something equally critical that can be harder to assess is the culture of the community. You’ll gain information and an overall feeling of a school as you visit different times, such as going on a personal tour. Building a complete picture of each school you visit will take time, but one thing you should pay attention to from your initial interaction with the school is whether the environment feels like a welcoming one to you and your family. Specifically, on your first visit to the school, you should pay attention to three groups: students, teachers, and administrators.

Private school students are deeply involved in their schools through extracurriculars and service. Why should that end at graduation? Read about why getting alumni involved in their former schools is essential to providing a top-notch education.

Recent events refueling the Black Lives Matter movement have some parents asking how to facilitate or deepen conversations about race with their children. As parents ourselves, we understand the importance of normalizing conversations surrounding race with our youngest learners as we all strive toward being antiracists. Research shows that children as young as three months are able to discern faces of different races, and these children look at the race of the caregiver for a longer time than other races [Kelly et al, 2005]. Children as young as two years old use race to explain behavior [Hirschfeld, 2008]. By five years old, children show many of the racial attitudes of the adults in their culture. They have already associated some groups with higher status than others [Kinzler, 2016]. It is, therefore, never too early to have direct conversations with children about race, racism, and antiracism.

If you know Sanford School, you know the natural beauty and roaming hills of the campus that lent the school its original namesake—Sunny Hills. While it is the work of Sanford faculty that provides the quality education Sanford aims to deliver, it is often what lies outside of the campus’s academic buildings that comes to mind when one thinks of what makes Sanford unique. Teachers have always found ways to incorporate the larger campus into students’ learning experiences, but now, for the first time in Sanford’s ninety-year history will its outdoor spaces be used as a safer alternative to the traditional classroom setting.

This has been an unusual summer, but while COVID-19 may have caused you to cancel your plans, but there are still many ways you can make the most of your stay-at-home summer. It's understandable to dwell on and feel disappointed about missed opportunities, but if you have the bandwidth anddesire, you may find great joy in using thissummer as the time to do the things you are usually too busy to do. Rather than dwelling on thistime as the summer of missed opportunities, you can turn it into the summer of exploration by diving into the following areas: