EDUCATION MATTERS—SANFORD SCHOOL'S PRIVATE SCHOOL BLOG

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.

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.

Educators have been aware of summer slide or a regression in academic progress over the summer months since a comprehensive study was published almost twenty-five years ago (Charlton, K, Cooper, H, Greathouse, S, Lindsay, J, Nye, B, 1996). Especially during a period of uncertainty when many families may be spending more time at home, Sanford School teachers are here to share ideas that will encourage continued academic growth and stability throughout the summer months. Setting up a consistent schedule in the summer filled with educational activities will help continue your child's learning throughout elementary school.

Once summer rolls along, it is often hard to resist the temptation to retire completely from the academic pursuits that had kept one so active during the school year. As tempting as this may be, what students often forget is how easy it is to incorporate these lessons into their summer schedules in a way that suits their interests. Here are just a few tips on how to keep the learning going so as to expand your interests and ease the transition into a new school year.

The summer slide is the learning loss that some students have at the beginning of the school year after the summer break. Studies have shown that there is a loss of about one to three months of knowledge from the end of the school year to the start. To avoid the summer slide, students need to be actively involved in educational opportunities so they can return to school ready to learn.

Going to middle school is a big change, and even though your child may be excited, there’s also probably some anxiety about moving up to the next level. This Scholastic article notes that some of the common fears that kids have about starting middle school. Parents can support their children by taking kids’ concerns seriously and, as much as possible, being proactive before the school year begins so that the transition is a smooth one. Read the following five tips that you can use to help prepare you and your child to make the move to middle school.

Distance learning is well underway in many schools across the country. Shifting to working at home takes time and patience for the whole family. Here are eight helpful hints to share with your children. We encourage you to download the form available to you at the bottom of this article and hope that some of these suggestions might be useful to you.

The National Council for History Education describes twelve practices that make up what they term History’s Habits of Mind, which are the skills that students develop when they are deeply engaged in rigorous history learning. While all of the skills are valuable, there is one that seems especially relevant during Black History Month: Utilizing multiple perspectives for comprehensive explanations. Incorporate this skill in the classroom by:

When you decide to move to a new area, one of the first things to do is to explore schools for your children. Below are a few tips for how to tackle each stage of the school research and selection process so that your move to a new city will be complemented by a smooth transition to a new school!