by Joyce Szuflita
What's in a name? Granted NYC School Help is lame. If I had thought another minute, I probably could have come up with something better, but when you search "joyce" or "help! schools" I figured it would be likely to come up in the search. Lately there has been a rash of similarly named schools that have occasionally been scrambling my brain.
By Joyce Szuflita
I say this all day long, "There is a mania for naming schools things that may or may not have anything to do with what is going on in the school." Whether you are looking at elementary, middle school or high school- look past the name. They are trying to differentiate themselves from other schools, but generally, and particularly at elementary and middle school, they often have the exact same curriculum and enrichments. Sometimes the name is wildly out of date. Sometimes it is aspirational.
By Joyce Szuflita
I keep having to answer this question over and over, infinitely, every year. Please parents and principals, can you read this?
Q: I've been on tours at 2 popular schools and both warned, if you want to get into this school, you better rank it #1! So, which do i put first?
A: I am asked about this, prek through hs - the schools have NO idea how this matching process works. They are trying to be helpful and when they are very popular, they assume that you need to put their school first to be considered. They never see your application, they don't know how you have ranked them, and they have absolutely NO say in this blind process. They assume, like most people that there is some priority given to first choice over second choice. There isn't.
Read MoreBy Joyce Szuflita
You and your child have run the nation's most famous high school admissions gauntlet! I promise you that the college search will be a breeze in comparison. You can put your feet up, but you may want to keep a couple little hints in your back pocket in case there are some hitches as your kids head off to high school.
By Joyce Szuflita
I heard a wonderful interview with Priscilla Gilman on Leonard Lopate's WNYC show yesterday. Her memoir is called "The Anti-Romantic Child" about her son with hyperlexia. It sounds like a terrific book, but I had a driveway moment (while parallel parking) when she read an excerpt from "Lines Written a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey" by William Wordsworth. Yesterday was my daughters' effective last day of high school. It is over. We did a good job; they did a good job. It is time to push them out of the nest with a brave face. So for all of you getting ready to leave the fours, 5th grade, 8th grade or 12th grade...
--That time is past,
And all its aching joys are now no more,
And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this
Faint I, nor mourn no murmur; other gifts
Have followed, for such loss, I would believe,
Abundant recompence.
By Joyce Szuflita
I have made it through 284 parent teacher conferences (give or take a couple). I know that I am extremely lucky to have children who are focused students. Sometimes I went to the conference to understand the curriculum, clarify homework policy, eyeball the interesting character that my child was doing impressions of, offer support, but mostly it was a pathetic ploy to hear nice things about my kids, and sometimes to bask in reflected praise. I will say again, emphatically, that I KNOW how lucky I am. So what is the parent of a graduating senior doing showing up at school in May? I told the teachers to put away the grade book for a minute and give me their parting words of wisdom for a college bound student. I was moved by their advice.
By Joyce Szuflita
Seniors Win!
It was not a fait accompli. The first performance was an unmitigated disaster by all accounts but they tightened the timing and changed the ending and by the last night it was a rollicking good time!
At Stuyvesant there are 3 Sing! contenders, Frosh/Soph, Juniors and Seniors. The Frosh/Soph theme of "searching for a theme" may have proven to be too "meta", and the snappy little quest script was high jacked by a sub plot about the evil Juniors stealing their "Fairy Tale" premise and making it Junior Nursery Rhymes. Considering that they are just dipping their toes into this amazing tradition, they did admirably well.
The Junior's Nursery Rhyme show was full of clever scenery. Jack and Jill's house with the fall away front was very original. The singing was strong and the characters were clever (although I didn't figure out that the narrarator with the puffy pants sitting on the piece of "Alice in Wonderland Wall" was Humpty Dumpty). My bad. In the end, the pacing was just too slow and I never really got down to enjoying the ride.
Read MoreBy Joyce Szuflita
When my kids were tiny and people used to say, "they grow up so fast!" I didn't know what the heck they were talking about. It was taking FOREVER! But now I get it. We just cleared another milestone, the last Senior/Fresh "Sing!" at Murrow. I have a terrible time trying to explain "Sing!" to middle school parents. It is a competition. It should really be called "Scream!". Depending on the school, it is two or three original nearly hour long student produced musicals which are judged and awarded bragging rights on the last night of performance. It is a super big deal.
By Joyce Szuflita
There is a terrific article in the NY Times for college freshmen and a parent on the parent NY of teens list-serve asked the group if there was anything like it for high school freshman.
Here are my two cents.
Every single high school senior will tell you, “get involved!”. To awkward freshman ears it only sounds like a come-on to get kids to join the clubs that the seniors have formed to pad their college resumes, but it is great advice. It is the best way to instantly stop feeling like an outsider. The longer they resist getting involved, the longer they are going to feel like they don’t have any friends. I wish I had a dollar for every time I heard, “I wish I had done this in freshman year”, or, “why didn’t I ever do that?”.
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This is not new news but it seems to surprise a great number of people so I thought I would include the link to the very interesting article from The New York Times from Nov. 2005.
You will do better to play to your strengths on the SHSAT and if you have limited time or test prep funds it may be a significant piece of information for you.
The Screened/Audition workshop for public high school choice at Brooklyn Tech this week was pretty short and sweet considering the weather and the wealth of subject matter. You can find the great, detailed audition advice as a pdf file under the July event date.
Here is the take away and some answers to interesting questions that I stayed to the bitter end to record:
The interview/audition panel is not trying to trick you. They are truly interested in you and what you have to present and they want to see your best and understand your interest or passion.
This is not American Idol or So You Think You Can Dance. You are auditioning for a conservatory not a production. They want to see technique or potential in anything you do. That means a pretty traditional approach.
Another Sing! season has come and gone and now we can get back to AP history and studying for the SAT. This year didn't disappoint. Sing! is a NYC high school institution, which started at Midwood HS in 1947. It is an original theatrical musical competition with teams from each class. Popular music is played by a live band with original lyrics along with student designed sets and costumes. Performances are judged and highly coveted bragging rights are awarded. I regularly attend the Sing! performances at Murrow and Stuy which have very different styles of performance.
How do you judge a school? You can look at the test scores. These may come in the form of the School Progress Reports (the DOE's flawed number crunching), the more nuanced but not fool-proof Quality Reviews or the number rankings given by the national websites. The black and white reality of a simple number or letter ranking is that it predicts how well your child will be able to complete a standardized test, not the quality of their education. The tests are scorned by parents whose children already attend school but the scores are often clung to as a measure of quality by prospective parents. Assessments need to be made and there has to some kind of accountability, but the richest learning doesn't happen within test prep and the score can be a smoke screen.I follow the neighborhood yahoo groups of parents of young children to answer questions about nursery and elementary school, but I occasionally yearn for a group of older parents. I need friends who will talk to me about tutors and teen break ups and how to handle the coed sleepover. I have been an avid member of the yahoo group, parentsofnyteens. It is smallish and chocked full of great parents that I actually know, who are funny and generous and very, very supportive.
Just two days ago, Rachel, the moderator, did us all a wonderful service and started the Parents of NY Teens blog where she is compiling information and resources that the yahoo group members have been supplying.
Now a place for us to go! - to find about the emotions and college tours and ...(a couple of months ago there was a lively discussion on the yahoo group about how to inform your son that it was time to take a shower). I recommend that you sign up for the group, and use the information on the blog early and often!
This was one of my earliest posts, but I went to parent teacher conferences last night and I think that it is still relevant.
I invented a new sport in my mind tonight. “In my mind” is my favorite kind of sport because I always win. I went to Parent/Teacher conferences at Murrow. We are blessed with a “Type A” perfectionist. I have nothing to complain to her teachers about and it is usually a 3-minute love fest. (Hey, I like my compliments cheap and often) The trick is to see all of the teachers in the 2 hours allotted. I need my teacher face time.
Let me explain the rules. You wait with hundreds of other parents in a giant shivering mass outside the school doors like it’s a Who concert with festival seating. (Imagine how those teachers feel, trapped inside with only an endless line of “issues” before them) If you are an “elite” NUTS player like myself, you have a list of teachers and room numbers coded by location. In a school the size of Murrow, this is key. You race to the farthest room, sign your name on the list outside the door and repeat on all lists in the near vicinity. Then you send your husband who is having trouble reading the map to sign up on other floors. (This may be a tactical error) If you are positioned outside the door when your name comes up on the list, you may go in and have your 3 minutes. If you arrive back to the classroom after your name has already been called you go to the end of the now endless list. The art of it is to fit in a couple of the less popular teachers between the majors. The team who finishes all their conferences in the least amount of time gets to go home and have a stiff drink.
10pts off for brow beating the poor student organizing the list outside the door.
5pts for doing the quick switch with the team right behind you on the list when you arrive just a minute too late.
2pts off for getting cornered by the candy sellers
10pts for giving them a $5 and not taking any candy
5pts for snagging a chair
10pts off for erasing names ahead of you on the list
10pts for visiting the phys ed. Teacher
Good Luck and may the GAMES BEGIN!
We experienced the last "Sing" performance a couple of weeks ago and now that the all of the hubbub has died down, I can jot some musings. This is NOT a review for any "sophfrosh"s out there surfing the web.
"Sing" is an institution in many NYC High Schools. The grades (separately or as teams) write and perform an original musical sung to popular tunes and compete for artistic supremacy. It would not be an understatement to say that these events are loaded with the requisite angst of any lumbering musical comedy and the added pressure of beating the pants off of the seniors.
I had the pleasure of comparing the experience at two of the city's premiere "Sing" competitions. Murrow, Brooklyn's own little "broadWAY" and Stuyvesant, where I am told that in Tim Robbin's senior year they wrote their own music.
Both student bodies were bold and fearless, which as a Broadway professional myself, I found both horrifying and sweet. The sets were beautiful and free in a way that shocked me out of my smug professionalism. I wouldn't have attempted the giant paper mache' man-eating volcano. Really, really, I didn't think teenagers could paint like that. I am not being patronizing when I say that it had the gorgeous freedom of the best children's artwork; unself-conscious with explosive color. The really cool thing was how different the production styles of each school were. The kids at Murrow are Broadway kids. They know their power ballad and the importance of having the chorus "sing out Louise" They used their huge chorus of hundreds to fill the stage with elaborate dance numbers that were as aerobic as they were audible. Stuy on the other hand resembled the Sugar Plum Fairy's, dance of many nations from the "Nutcracker". They assembled clever stories that were a framework for the many, many multicultural vignettes. They say it isn't a Stuy "Sing" until you've seen the "Ballywood" number.
All of the productions had their good points, but I have to give special mention to the Stuy Seniors who did a classic production of a "Head vs. Heart" love story, literally... it takes place in a body... there was a guy playing the role of the Bladder. I knew that we were in for a treat during the first double helix, DNA dance number, soon to be followed by the four Hormones, in their leather jackets and da's singing doo op. My favorite character, after the aerobic pink Pair of Lungs and the Drunken Liver Ladies, was the Appendix wearing a giant "?" on his sweater. He took one for the team during the climactic Virus vs. White Blood Cell dance number. The attention to detail was impressive as my nerdy family observed, because during the dance whenever a virus attacked a cell, the cell would throw off this shirt representing the exploding of the cell wall. I didn't even know that happens, but they assured me that the biology was accurate.
Kudos to all involved. Go FRESH!
I invented a new sport in my mind tonight. “In my mind” is my favorite kind sport because I always win. I went to Parent/Teacher conferences at Murrow. We are blessed with a “Type A” perfectionist. I have nothing to complain to her teachers about and it is usually a 3-minute love fest. (Hey, I like my compliments cheap and often) The trick is to see all of the teachers in the 2 hours allotted. I need my teacher face time.
Let me explain the rules. You wait with hundreds of other parents in a giant shivering mass outside the school doors like it’s a Who concert with festival seating. (Imagine how those teachers feel, trapped inside with only an endless line of “issues” before them) If you are an “elite” NUTS player like myself, you have a list of teachers and room numbers coded by location. In a school the size of Murrow, this is key. You race to the farthest room, sign your name on the list outside the door and repeat on all lists in the near vicinity. Then you send your husband who is having trouble reading the map to sign up on other floors. (This may be a tactical error) If you are positioned outside the door when your name comes up on the list, you may go in and have your 3 minutes. If you arrive back to the classroom after your name has already been called you go to the end of the now endless list. The art of it is to fit in a couple of the less popular teachers between the majors. The team who finishes all their conferences in the least amount of time gets to go home and have a stiff drink.
10pts off for brow beating the poor student organizing the list outside the door.
5pts for doing the quick switch with the team right behind you on the list when you arrive just a minute too late.
2pts off for getting cornered by the candy sellers
10pts for giving them a $5 and not taking any candy
5pts for snagging a chair
10pts off for erasing names ahead of you on the list
10pts for visiting the phys ed. Teacher
Good Luck and may the GAMES BEGIN!
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