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At 10:05 AM -0600 1/27/04, List Manager wrote:
Anyone care to share any feedback or personal experiences with any of our cities Charter Schools? (Some parents are "shopping" for schools right now - any information would be helpful).
I can tell you from personal experience with Twin Cities Academy (at Randolph and View), that they have an excellent program. Though limited to the three grades before high school.
Their classes are excellent and prepared my daughter for high school in many ways. They impressed upon her a drive to learn, to complete assignments on time, to go the extra mile on a project. So far I am glad to say that this portion of their program has stuck with her in her first year in at Highland. The only real problem is that it is a small school, and moving to Highland a large school was a bit of a shock and especially since most of the friends she knew at TCA went to different schools.
They allow students, with parental oversight obviously, to pick from a variety of classes beyond the standard things like Read, Ritin, n Rithmatic. These run the gambit from studying the environment, arts & crafts, to working in the computer lab. They lack in one area and that is physical education, they don't have a large gym so they are limited in what they can offer in that area.
One of the best things that I have personally experienced is their requirement of parents to be involved in the school. They expect each family to put in a number of hours assisting the school, or participating in events at the school. All you have to do it show up for an evening of fun, for parent teacher conferences etc... and it's credited toward that time. You can go beyond that and assist in the classes, help them with mailings, do phone calling about events or fundsraisers, they basically make it very easy for parents to help out the school. Which obviously benefits the school tremendously but also makes the parents part of their childs education.
The other great thing is they instill from day one a requirement of the students to behave properly. I have been in many schools where it seems like the teachers and staff are being run by the students. This is not the case at TCA. The students move from class to class without alot of what you find in many other schools. You see teachers and even the principal roaming the halls and heaven forbid chastising students who are running, being disruptive or other things. Actually in all the hours I spent in the school over 3 years my daughter was there I think I can count on one hand the number of times I saw a teacher take any sort of corrective action, even then it was just them telling a student to stop running in the hall. I spent alot of time in the school being an aid in the computer lab.
Haven spoken before large crowds of people, and students, you usually find in an audience that some portion of it is disruptive, talking, making noise, etc... Not the case when I spoke to the student body about how how important it is to become involved with issues. Imagine my surprise to have all these kids coming into the room in an orderly manner, take their seats and not be horseing around as kids of this age normally do. This went on through about a half hour presentation, everyone was paying attention. At the end we opened it up for questions, many hands were raised, people kept quiet while questions were asked and answered. When it was over they left just as they came in, in an orderly and relatively quiet manner. Many come by and thanked me for coming and talking to them. I was awestruck and commented to the principal how great an audience she had in these students.
Other schools could, should, look at TCA and see what they are doing and probably learn alot about how to really run a school and produce from it students of excellent quality.
Just one parents perspective on the difference between this school its students and others I have been in and seen.
-- Sincerely, John Birrenbach [EMAIL PROTECTED]
"Six years on the council has trained me to feign interest for long periods of time" Chris Coleman Jan 21, 2004
W 7th Neighborhood, St Paul MN
Political & Business Consulting http://www.birrenbach.com/
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