magnet schools

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The emotional rollercoaster of applying for kindergartens for my kid is way more intense than I anticipated. How have these processes become so complicated?

Episode Highlights

00:30    Coming into 2020 I thought I’d be sending my kid to preschool, but then Covid hit and we had to scrap that plan.

01:11    I’m not going to send my kid to digital preschool, because that’s ridiculous.

01:18    Isn’t the point of preschool and kindergarten to learn how to socialize with your peers and instructors?

01:52    My feelings at first were, “I’ve totally got this!” But how simple it was for me to believe that then!

02:07    There’s been a lot of benefits to having my kid home this year. But there was a part of me feeling like the system has betrayed me and let me down.

02:25    My brain gets so upset when things don’t go to plan and it’s outside of my control.

02:39    The plan was flawed from the very beginning because it relied on humanity to have its shit together!

03:30    Zoom worked well for my kid for the first three months, but as time wore on it was less and less interesting and effective.

04:00    As a parent, I have a deep sadness that my kid lost an entire year of socialization with anyone outside of our household.

05:20    I don’t even know what I’m doing. I’ve never had a kid going to school before, and this whole process is madness.

05:40    How many of us are dealing with the overwhelm of choosing between seven school options for our kids that are different focal tracks starting from pre-k?

06:00    The craziness of so many magnet schools with specialties is that the default public school, by comparison, seems really boring and awful because it doesn’t have an “angle”

07:30    I realized have FOMO on behalf of my child for stuff that she might not even be interested in at all!

07:40    The tradeoff for these amazing schools seems to be the commute time because you have to get them there. So your four hours available to work becomes one after all the driving.

08:35    The magnet school has a special chef. But the regular school I’m pretty sure just has regular volunteers like me making bologna sandwiches. The desire for the chef school is real.

09:10    No pressure, just decide the entire trajectory of your child’s education starting from age 4… and GO!

10:00    You suddenly realize how much you’re basing your decision on what you wanted as a kid and not at all on what your kid wants or cares about.

 12:57   It’s stress level 10 out of nowhere some mornings as I wake up and feel compelled to check my email to see if my kid got into these schools.

13:20    All of this is my own drama. My kid is going to be fine no matter what!

15:12    This is what happens after an entire year of pandemic. The desperation for connection, the absolute need to make sure that things pan out well as though it’s a prize for having made it this far.

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Thanks for listening!

Tracy Childers is a science teacher at Foothills Community School, a STEM magnet school, which is part of McDowell County Schools in North Carolina. After graduating from college, Tracy spent the next 30 years in supervision and management in the textile industry. He decided to pursue teaching to honor the memory of his two daughters, Casey and Courtney, after they passed away in an automobile accident in December 2002. In the 16 years he has been working as an educator, Tracy has been a middle school science and math teacher for 6th, 7th, and 8th grade. His current school, Foothills Community School, is a Project Based Learning (PBL) school with mixed-grade classrooms.

The Teachers in America series profiles K–12 teachers across the country. Hear firsthand from the people who are shaping young lives in the classroom every day. This episode was originally recorded at the 2019 Model Schools Conference.

 Read more: https://www.hmhco.com/blog/hmh-learning-moments-teachers-in-america-tracy-childers-marion-nc