More on Preschool
I should have mentioned that there are a few preschool to grade school options I find extremely tempting. For instance, the schools that offer language immersion programs in Spanish or in Mandarin. These are appealing because they take advantage of children’s amazing facility with language acquisition—an ability that drops off some time before puberty—and because they offer something I just can’t replicate at home. I’m quite confident in my ability to tutor Robin in early academics, and pretty confident that we can round out his social experiences through sports, art/music classes, and other kinds of group activities; but I can’t give him fluency in a second language. Even enrolling him in supplemental language classes wouldn’t begin to approach the benefits of immersion learning.
Unfortunately these language immersion schools are highly competitive, and getting Robin into one of them would require running the parental rat-race that I’m so keen to avoid. They’re also not cheap. San Francisco does have public elementary schools with immersion programs (Starr King is one), so if we’re still in the city when Robin’s ready for grade school we might try our chance in the lottery for a place at one of those. If we’re in Oakland, I’ll have to do some research to determine if there’s anything similar there.
The other preschool option I find tempting is the half-day, two day a week program at the San Francisco Waldorf School. (Oakland has a Waldorf school too.) Oh, but Waldorf—my conflicted take on Waldorf is going to require its own post.
February 5th, 2010 at 1:37 pm
I would be interested in your take on Waldorf (and of Montessori if you have one). I like it in theory but in practice (mostly logistics of distance and available hours) the two we have nearby didn’t work out as preschools. I might look around later for elementary- but it does take a certain type of personality as a parent.
In Mountain View, we have our regular elementary school which (as far as I can tell) is very good if you are from that ‘privileged’ background, a dual immersion Spanish-English and a PACT charter school. Coming from a bilingual background and having sent my kids to ‘mostly spanish/some english’ home daycare, I’m becoming more convinced you have to look at the kid. I did fine switching languages regularly, my sister had a hard time (and utterly refuses to raise her kid bilingually even though she and her husband have different mother tongues), my nearly 4 year old kid had a very hard time with three languages and is now thriving at english-only preschool (and dutch at home), my little one is doing fine with three languages.
This could, of course, all change in a couple of years.
However, when you do your research, you might to see if there is any data on problems that might arise on an individual level. I’ve only seen the ‘overall’ studies. Also, I’ve heard here and there that there is a window around 3 where introducing a 2nd language is near impossible. I am not 100% confident this is really true.
A year from making the decision, I’m thinking that the local elementary may win simply because it’s easier for us (less commute, easy walking distance, more family time) and because of the community involvement. I really really like walking/cycling around my area and knowing people- and people knowing my kids.
Oh, in your search you might also look at coops (cheap, lots of work but supposedly very rewarding) and that Italian preschool (kind of like montessori).
February 5th, 2010 at 2:02 pm
I had not heard that about 3-year-olds having trouble with a second language! I *have* heard that children raised in bilingual homes are a little slower to develop full facility with either language, but that the benefits to being bilingual later in life are very strong — not just in being able to communicate with more of the world, but in terms of finding it easier to learn additional languages, and some say that it helps with music studies as well.
I went to Montessori for a little bit as a kid. My memory is that they were kind of weirdly rigid about some things — like, I was given paper with the outline of shapes on it, and I had to color in the shapes using only one color of pencil and using tiny little strokes to fill the shape. I’ve no idea how much of that was Montessori doctrine and how much was just the particular school I went to, but I’m more of a “draw outside the lines and use whatever color you want” kind of mom, so I’d really have to look into Montessori more carefully before making a choice there. I know my mom does credit Montessori with helping me become an early reader.
I haven’t done much research on coops at all — thanks for the tip, I’ll look into that! It sounds like it could be a really good option for us, actually.