Private School Blog
Private School Tuition: Contribute without Triggering Gift Tax Limits
It’s not often that you come across something that triggers one’s “why doesn’t everybody know this?” But, I did ask myself that question after my interview with Mike Szydlowski, Woodberry Forrest School, financial aid director and independent tax preparer. Is Private School Tax Deductible? Your Tuition Questions Answered I asked Mike about tax implications of [...]
Read MoreAn Impressive & Informative SSAT Presentation
Private boarding and day schools, like colleges, often include a test component in their admission processes. Standardized tests help the school understand where a student stands in his/her education no matter what school, or where he/she comes from. The Secondary Schools Admission Test, or SSAT, is often the test of choice in this process. As [...]
Read MoreCelebrating Teachers
Recently we celebrated National Teacher Appreciation Week. We asked you to submit how your school honored its faculty during this week. We received a few shout outs, but had to do a little digging of our own to see how independent schools go about highlighting the greatness of its teachers during this week and every [...]
Read MoreMath Gains Come More Easily: And I’m a Math Teacher
Friends and family have emailed The New York Times’s recent article “In Raising Scores 1 2 3 Is Easier Than A B C” to me because I am a high school math teacher and that, somehow, makes me the resident expert on 4th grade curriculum, instruction, and testing. The Times article addresses many valid reasons why [...]
Read MoreFive Reasons to Consider Summer Boarding School
With Memorial Day weekend signaling the close of the school year, families and students are looking at the best ways for kids to have fun, productive summers. Parents are planning activities, considering camp possibilities, helping their sons or daughters explore job or internship options. Maybe an academic experience is part of the equation. Purposeful growth [...]
Read MorePreparing for Spring Exams
From my inbox this morning, a good piece on preparing for upcoming exams from our colleagues at Summit Educational Group. May 2013 Final exams I know. I know. Everybody gives advice from all different directions when it comes to taking exams. I can still instantly riff on the exam advice I’d give to my classes. [...]
Read MoreSpring and Summer Admission: Potential Pitfalls
Many families arrive to the admission process deep into the school year—even into the summer. This later, compressed, admission timeline carries a few potential pitfalls of which families need to be aware. As we remind families, very good schools continue working with families and admitting students deep into the summer and early fall. Every type [...]
Read MoreChoosing the Boarding School That’s Right For You: People Matter
This story came to me via the grapevine last week, about a student, who believed that he had found the perfect school, but, after his accepted student revisit, found that his dream wasn’t his dream at all. In fact, it was something of a nightmare. Full disclosure, I verified that this story is, indeed, true. [...]
Read MoreTeacher Appreciation Week: Share Your Stories
Today, I’m going to lobby for connecting the boarding school internal to the external. As were fond of observing, boarding schools work so well because they do such a good job of focusing internally — while the the rest of the world can go on unconnected. Great faculty make a boarding school hum and make [...]
Read MoreThree Reasons an American Student Chose a Canadian Boarding School
I visited a few minutes with Shawnigan Lake student, Rosa about how she chose Shawnigan Lake, one of Canada’s largest boarding schools, as student coming from California’s Bay Area. Boarding school, and Shawnigan’s international student experience, in particular, offered Rosa opportunities that stretched her beyond her comfort zone. Rosa concludes her interview offering three things that [...]
Read MorePaper vs. Screens: The Evolving Equation
Scientific American writer Ferris Jabr has a good distillation of the evolving science and understandings of the differences in brain functions and affects when reading a physical book vs. using a tablet/screen/e-reader. In The Reading Brain in the Digital Age: The Science of Paper versus Screens, Jabr poses some large and, largely unreseovled, questions as [...]
Read MoreAsheville Releases In-house Built App for iPhone and iPad
Asheville isn’t the first school to release an iPhone/iPad app devoted to covering and following school happenings, “Asheville School App Now Available on App Store.” But, they are the first that I know of- to have built the app in-house. Asheville Technology Coordinator Charles Long and Director of Communications Bob Williams created the app. And, [...]
Read MoreGrand River Academy Joins with John Carroll University to Create Aspire Program
Grand River Academy and John Carroll University are combining resources to create The Aspire Program. Aspire will allow Grand River’s qualified international students to begin their collegiate careers while at Grand River as well as the opportunity to be admitted to John Carroll at the conclusion of their Grand River/Aspire experience. GRA international students holding [...]
Read MorePhoto Essay: Greenwood School Gettysburg Address
This small photo essay accompanies the post about Greenwood’s Gettysburg Address recitation right of passage. Learn more about the Ken Burns Greenwood School Documentary.
Read MoreKen Burns Explores the Greenwood School’s Gettysburg Address Recitation
If you’re of a certain age, been a U.S history student during the past two decades, and/or a PBS aficionado, you know Ken Burns interest in the civil war through his exhaustive 1990 documentary The Civil War. The Civil War still stands as benchmark among documentary films for its length, audience size, and quality of [...]
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