Get Directions for Making High School Choices
I enjoy visiting Private Boarding Schools in the States. In the past few years, I did campus tours around cities in the north east coast of the USA for getting more information about the schools and expanding the school options to the students. I liked to know how schools differed in terms of their curriculum, learning environment, school culture and the impressions that their students gave me.
I found that there would be a greater chance to get into some prestigious High Schools in the big cities like Boston, New York, New Jersey and Baltimore if your child applied for grade 9. Of course, not all boarding schools accept grade 9 overseas students. After all, making a good choice of High Schools much depends on the extent to which the school characteristics match with the personal characteristics of the student par se.
Generally speaking, I would recommend middle size schools to students who are kind of introverted. In addition, special learning support is particularly important for students who have attention deficit hyperactivity disorders, non-verbal learning disabilities and other processing problems. Students whose self management skills, organization and self care lagged behind, should not be expected to grow out of these struggles once they studied abroad. Special learning support to coach the students to cope with their organization difficulties should be given before study overseas. These issues, if not adequately managed at the high school, would turn into risk factors for college drop out.
Sometimes the parents may assume that sending their gifted children to boarding school is the solution to their chronic problems of under-performance. In my point of view, teasing out the issues underlying underacheiving behaviors of the students should go first. If parents put those unresolved problems of their children to the hands of school teachers, there might be higher risk of their declining motivation for school achievement because these teachers did not know them well and the teacher-student rapport definitely takes considerable time to build up. My advice is don't take boarding school to do magic for your child. Intervention should start as soon as possible. The best scenario is starting intervention early and keeping up the positive outcomes of intervention measures in the boarding school.
The best timing for application, I think, is to prepare your Grade 8 children for the SSAT or TOEFL about 8 to 9 months before studying at your target boarding school. To promote the readiness of taking those public examinations, learning behavior, cognitive, affective, social and neurodevelopmental issues should be screened and ruled out. In case intervention is needed, the students will take about 6 months for some remedial training and other treatment plans. During the 6-months treatment, the behavioral intervention and other progress could be recorded and presented as evidence of effective changes. The teachers in the new boarding school can do follow-up for the individual student rather than starting a new case file.
Moreover, it is strongly recommended that a thorough physical and mental health checkup be done not just for fulfilling the school requirement of application but also screening of problems particularly mood disorders like anxiety, bipolar disorder and psychosomatic issues.
I enjoy visiting Private Boarding Schools in the States. In the past few years, I did campus tours around cities in the north east coast of the USA for getting more information about the schools and expanding the school options to the students. I liked to know how schools differed in terms of their curriculum, learning environment, school culture and the impressions that their students gave me.
I found that there would be a greater chance to get into some prestigious High Schools in the big cities like Boston, New York, New Jersey and Baltimore if your child applied for grade 9. Of course, not all boarding schools accept grade 9 overseas students. After all, making a good choice of High Schools much depends on the extent to which the school characteristics match with the personal characteristics of the student par se.
Generally speaking, I would recommend middle size schools to students who are kind of introverted. In addition, special learning support is particularly important for students who have attention deficit hyperactivity disorders, non-verbal learning disabilities and other processing problems. Students whose self management skills, organization and self care lagged behind, should not be expected to grow out of these struggles once they studied abroad. Special learning support to coach the students to cope with their organization difficulties should be given before study overseas. These issues, if not adequately managed at the high school, would turn into risk factors for college drop out.
Sometimes the parents may assume that sending their gifted children to boarding school is the solution to their chronic problems of under-performance. In my point of view, teasing out the issues underlying underacheiving behaviors of the students should go first. If parents put those unresolved problems of their children to the hands of school teachers, there might be higher risk of their declining motivation for school achievement because these teachers did not know them well and the teacher-student rapport definitely takes considerable time to build up. My advice is don't take boarding school to do magic for your child. Intervention should start as soon as possible. The best scenario is starting intervention early and keeping up the positive outcomes of intervention measures in the boarding school.
The best timing for application, I think, is to prepare your Grade 8 children for the SSAT or TOEFL about 8 to 9 months before studying at your target boarding school. To promote the readiness of taking those public examinations, learning behavior, cognitive, affective, social and neurodevelopmental issues should be screened and ruled out. In case intervention is needed, the students will take about 6 months for some remedial training and other treatment plans. During the 6-months treatment, the behavioral intervention and other progress could be recorded and presented as evidence of effective changes. The teachers in the new boarding school can do follow-up for the individual student rather than starting a new case file.
Moreover, it is strongly recommended that a thorough physical and mental health checkup be done not just for fulfilling the school requirement of application but also screening of problems particularly mood disorders like anxiety, bipolar disorder and psychosomatic issues.
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