I remember plaid skirts and playing “Smurfs” at recess. I remember erasers and school lunches . . . the smell of Lysol and sweaty gyms. I remember feeling scared, shy, and homesick. Kindergarten and the early years of elementary school weren’t easy for me. I felt shy and socially awkward, embarrassed and overwhelmed. Welcome to the human experience, right?
Now it’s time for us to send Ava out into the world of elementary education, and I find myself on the horns of a huge dilemma. Two years ago, we moved Ava out of daycare and into Willowwind Preschool, mainly because she missed the kindergarten cut-off by just two days, and we didn’t want her languishing in a daycare setting until she was six. So off to Willowwind (a small, private school) she went. Simple, right? Not really. Because last year, they met with us and asked if they could move Ava up to kindergarten at WW. We agreed, thinking that she’d have to repeat the year at Hoover anyway, and this would just make her extra prepared.
And extra prepared she is: During this year at WW, she’s had an amazing teacher and even more amazing experiences, including touring a UI science lab, presenting her original poetry at an all-school literary reading, working with graduates from the UI Writers’ Workshop, and participating in daily Group Discussions with the entire school. Along the way, she’s learned to read at an end-of-first-grade level, while also completing first-grade math and social-studies assignments. It’s been incredible. And now it’s supposed to end.
You see, Mark and I had always agreed that Ava would go to Hoover, and I thought that would be just fine. Then I toured Hoover last week. The school is in a squat, drab, dark, 1960s-era building in desperate need of updates. While we were there, Ava and I used a dank, dark bathroom–covered in institutional-green tile–that had a bloody booger smeared on the wall and a broken hand-towel dispenser. The school added 70 new families last year and is so overcrowded that it will be bringing in a temporary classroom–a.k.a. a trailer–for next year. The first-grade classroom we saw had desks arranged in the same linear, noncollaborative rows that were around when I was a kid in the 1970s. The band is so short on practice space that the kids literally practice in a CLOSET!!
When I asked the first-grade teacher we met about how they would work to meet Ava at her level, she said, “Well, we really can’t do second-grade work with her.” Then the principal chimed in, unhelpfully, to say, “You should ask Willowwind why they are doing first-grade work in kindergarten.” Though this certainly is a valid question–and one I would have asked sooner, if I had known–it didn’t make me feel at all reassured about how Ava’s needs might be met in public school.
So here we are. I want to keep Ava at Willowwind if I can. I love its LEED-certified, light-filled, open, collaborative spaces. I love its small classes and amazing teachers. I love its emphasis on family and community. I love its partnership between older and younger kids. I love the way our daughter has bloomed there, both academically and socially.
Mark, on the other hand, doesn’t love it so much if it means spending money. He thinks the public school is perfectly acceptable, and he doesn’t want us to spend as much on her elementary tuition as we would for a daycare payment. While I totally see his point, and I agree about the money and the value of a public education, I can’t help but think about Ava and her bright, collaborative classroom with its computers, art supplies, and circular tables. I think about her young, energetic teacher who works to meet Ava’s needs individally. I think about the LEED-certified building and its commitment to environmental sustainability. And I wonder how we can remove our only daughter from that environment.
ARGH!! What to do? What to do? And if we keep her at WW, will it be even harder for her to transition into the overwhelmingly huge and depressing junior high in our part of town? Will it hurt her social chances the way it did mine? (I attended a small, private, Catholic school through seventh grade, and the transition was a killer.)
I’m sad today because there seem to be no good solutions. And I feel like Ava’s whole future–and her happiness and success–depends on us making the right choice now. SIGH.