Oakley's Education...

Our Oakley is one bright child. And I’m not saying this just because I’m his Mom; we have the numbers to back it up. During his kindergarten year we came to the conclusion that Oakley needed something more than public school had to offer. I think that public education works for 80% of kids. As Oakley’s mother, I felt very strongly that I needed to do all within my power to help Oakley foster this gift he has been given. Since Oakley started preschool at 2 ½, his teachers kept telling me how intelligent he was, I just smiled and nodded my head – figuring they said this to all mothers. Also, because Oakley is our first child, we figured all kids did what he did. I thought all 18 month olds had the books their mothers read to them memorized. I thought all babies would sit and willingly be read to for over an hour from the time they were a few months old. I didn’t have anything else to compare it to, so I thought it was the norm. As all mothers do, I taught him his letters and the sounds they make starting when he was about two. I figured that’s as far as I needed to go because I didn’t want to be one of those neurotic mothers who was teaching their three year old Greek. I knew he needed to know his letters, colors, numbers, etc. before kindergarten and that’s as far as I wanted to go because I didn’t want him bored in kindergarten. Then at age three he started asking me, “Does this say…..” on words he’d see on the cereal box, in his books, on signs, etc. and HE’D BE RIGHT. Yes, Oakley totally taught himself to read at three years old. I can take absolutely no credit, no one iota – he figured it out himself. When I went to October Parent-Teacher Conference and his teacher told me he had already tested out of all the reading materials for kindergarten, I was a bit concerned. So what was he doing in kindergarten then? There didn’t seem to be any attempt to get him more material. That’s when I knew it was time to start looking into private schools.

As I began asking friends who had their children in private and charter schools about their children’s experiences, I still felt so unsure about what to do. I don’t know how I would have ever made a final decision had it not been for the incredibly strong confirmation Scott and I both received after touring the Montessori Learning Center. The director was amazing and that’s what impressed us most in the beginning. As we learned more about the curriculum and how the classroom was set up and all the detail, we just felt better and better about it. We toured other schools, talked to more parents, and neither of us ever felt once that there was a better place that our Oakley could be. As soon as the doubts about how we could afford the tuition, all of the driving involved, what about having friends in the neighborhood – neither of us could deny the powerful impression we had that this was the best place for Oakley.