The October Wall: Why Good Students Start Missing Work in Middle School
Every fall, in the same two weeks, bright middle schoolers start missing work. Here is what changed, and what to do before the report card.
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How to Email a Teacher So You Become One of Their Favorite Families
As teachers, we are going to help your child no matter what kind of email you write. What the email changes is not whether we help. It changes how we feel when your name shows up in the inbox.
How to Actually Get a Grade Changed (Without Annoying Your Teacher)
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 Hidden Economics of a $55,000 Tuition: Where Your Money Actually Goes
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...
How Schools Actually Decide Who Gets Into Advanced Math
If you're the parent of a middle schooler, 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 outside: how did the...
What "Executive Function" Actually Means: The Phrase That Defines the Jump from Lower School to Middle School
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 Parent Playbook for Changing a Math Placement (Without Burning Bridges)
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...
The Last Six Weeks (Why May Is When Good Kids Get in Trouble)
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,...
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What Teachers Actually Recommend for 2nd and 3rd Graders When the Screens Go Off
Summer enrichment is one of those phrases that sounds clear until a parent tries to plan around it. Many lower school parents are circling the same problem by mid-May: you've got ten weeks, a seven or eight-year-old who will happily watch a tablet for six...
When the Friend Group Turns: What Actually Helps in Middle School (And What Makes It Worse)
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...
Your Child Is Tricking You Into Thinking They're Studying
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...
When the Project Looks Bad, Leave It Alone (The Case for the Crooked Trifold)
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...
How to Actually Get a Grade Changed (Without Annoying Your Teacher)
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 Teacher Gift Question (A Triage Guide for the Last Week of School)
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...
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