You notice something during pick-up this week. There's a group chat she's not in anymore. The lunch table has shifted. Nothing the teachers can name, nothing your child herself can fully explain, but the social ground has moved underneath her and she's the one...
A May playbook for parents of middle and upper school students. Most students wait until June to have the grade conversation. By June it is over. The gradebook is almost closed and the teacher has heard the same appeal from a dozen students that week. The window that actually matters...
Parents receive the annual report on giving. The handwritten thank-you cards from the Head of School. The polished newsletter explaining how a recent capital campaign will "transform the student experience." What parents almost never receive is a straight answer about where the tuition itself goes, and why the...
If you're the parent of a middle schooler at an independent school, the course assignment email for next year either just landed in your inbox or it will soon. And for a lot of families, that email raises a question that's hard to answer from the...
If your child is finishing 4th or 5th grade, there's a phrase about to enter your life that you'll hear constantly for the next few years: executive function. Teachers will use it. Learning specialists will use it. The middle school orientation packet will use it. And...
The placement decision came back, and your child is not in the advanced math class. As their parent, you believe that they should be. The question now is what to actually do about it. There is a path forward. Schools build appeal processes for a reason, and the summer between...
Why does a child who has held it together since September suddenly get written up in the second week of May? The answer is not mysterious, and it is not a behavior problem in the way parents usually mean that phrase. It is the calendar. The school year is ending,...
You notice something during pick-up this week. There's a group chat she's not in anymore. The lunch table has shifted. Nothing the teachers can name, nothing your child herself can fully explain, but the social ground has moved underneath her and she's the one...
It is a weeknight. Dinner is done, the dishwasher is humming, and a parent is pottering around the kitchen, half-listening to a podcast, when the thought arrives: I hope they're studying for that test on Thursday. The walk down the hallway is quiet. A soft knock on the...
The end-of-year project is two assignments stacked on top of each other. Parents who finish the visible one tend to complete the invisible one too, and that's the one that mattered. It's mid May. The trifold is bowing in the middle because the glue stick was...
A May playbook for parents of middle and upper school students. Most students wait until June to have the grade conversation. By June it is over. The gradebook is almost closed and the teacher has heard the same appeal from a dozen students that week. The window that actually matters...
The end of the school year sneaks up every June, and somewhere around the first week of the month, the question lands: what to get the teacher. There is no wrong answer here. Teachers are genuinely happy to be thought of, and any gift that arrives with a kind note...
Course selection season is happening right now. Most independent school parents don't know what their child's transcript is being measured against. The conversation happening in a lot of houses this month A version of this exchange is taking place at independent school dinner tables across the...
