The Kid Has Arrived

Preschool Madness: It Begins

Even though it’s only early December, it turns out that we got a late start on the preschool application process. It’s not that we’re trying to get into some crazy Manhattan preschool that requires an interview and testing and costs like $28,000 a year (although we do have a few of those in Brooklyn, too…looking at you, St. Ann’s with your $24,000 a year tuition), but there is a limit to the affordable options and there are a lot of parents applying. I made my preschool spreadsheet and duly started the process, ruling out all the schools whose Fall/Winter tours were already closed. I’m trying to focus on the schools with 2s program that are either 2 full days a week or 3 mornings (although the latter option only works if the school is within our neighborhood). It’s not that I think the boy really needs to be in preschool next year, but I think he’ll enjoy it a lot, since the alternative might be a lot of sitting around at home with mama and the new baby. If there’s one thing that Milo hates, it’s sitting around.

Matt and I went on our second preschool tour this morning. This one, at the Early Childhood Center at Congregation Beth Elohim in Park Slope, was much more successful than the Waldorf school tour. For one thing, we didn’t have to sit through an adult chorus made up of gangly white ladies with unkempt eyebrows singing African folk songs. So, you know, CBE automatically gets one point in their favor for that.

The Waldorf tour was…underwhelming. The school facility itself was lovely. The classrooms were, as expected, very Waldorfian - all wooden things and knitting needles and balls of yarn and cozy feelings. I was feeling pretty positive about it all, until we sat down in the auditorium for a Q&A session with the Director of Admissions and a few teachers. After the aforementioned adult chorus, the real trouble began.

I’m sure the school must do this open house/Q&A session a few times a year, and yet, it was like none of the teachers had ever been asked to speak in front of a group of adults before. There was a lot of slouching and giggling and hair touching and mumbling. Everyone in the audience kept requesting for the questions that were being asked to be repeated by the teacher currently holding the microphone, but usually by the time the teachers had decided amongst themselves who would answer said question (with a lot of giggling and slouching and adjusting of clothes), this request would be forgotten.

I felt like none of the teachers could give a straight answer to anything, and none of them seemed to be able to put forth a coherent reasoning as to why they thought a Waldorf education was special. They kept mentioning that two of them had been involved in Waldorf since nursery school, a fact they seemed to find compelling, but that I found to be off-putting since they were acting like total dimwits. Toward the end, another teacher (currently the 8th grade teacher, I believe) joined them. He was very engaging, and was able to talk intelligently and coherently about anthroposophy and it’s educational approach. I’m sure that within a classroom setting, all of the teachers are warm and nurturing people. I wish we could have seen the classrooms in action because maybe seeing the teachers in their classrooms would’ve put my mind at ease a bit more. I just can’t wrap my head around trying to deal with them as a parent.

I spoke with a dad the other who had done the Parent Child program with his daughter this year. He said it wasn’t a bad experience, but he couldn’t necessarily recommend it for everyone. For one thing, it really does cater toward wealthier families. Your child can’t participate in that program if you don’t have one parent who stays home or is available to take off work for those sessions because you can’t send a caregiver in your place. He said that it was a very hushed setting, that everything seemed to be conducted quietly and at a whisper, which was hard to manage if your child is a very active, rambunctious goofball like his daughter. He also made a good point about continuing on to nursery school there. If you’re not planning on sending your kid through grade school there because you couldn’t afford the $17,000-22,000 yearly tuition for the lower grades, it might be a really rough transition to go from a Waldorf classroom into a public school classroom.

With all of that in mind, we crossed Waldorf off our list and moved on to the next school. The CBE school is lovely. It occupies an enormous building across the street from the shul, and it has programs for ages 2-5. There’s even an indoor swimming pool, so the kids take swim lessons starting in the 3s program. The tour guide was very thorough and friendly, and it was wonderful to see the classrooms in action. Lots of opportunity for creative play, lots of crafts related to larger projects and ideas, and lots of art and music. Matt and I ended up cutting the tour a little short because our parking meter was about to run out, and also, it turned out that the 2s program is not really practical for us. I don’t know how I missed it, but the 2s program is only 2 hours a day, twice a week. If it was in our neighborhood, that might be ok, but it’s too far of a schlep to be worth it.

So, on to the next one! We have a tour on Friday at a foreign language immersion (we’d go with Spanish, though they offer French and Italian too), arts-based preschool in Carroll Gardens called Hands on World. It’s affordable (ish)(as in, not really but I guess we can maybe swing it if we get really good about a strict household budget), and the hours are right, so we’ll see. We have another tour in 2 weeks at a Reggio-Emilia school in Williamsburg, an open house next week at a co-op school in Flatbush, and a tour in January at the Co-op School in our neighborhood, which is our first choice.

God, when did this become my life?