Duke School

About

Duke School is where Zander went for 6th grade (2008-9). He enjoyed it and seemed to be learning the material, but there were conflicts with their teaching style, and it's not clear that they would have been willing to renew his contract if we had not found an alternative.

Survey Comments

I wrote this in response to one of the pages in an online survey conducted by a 3rd party at Duke School's request in May 2009. The page in question had to do with "core values", specifically including "collaboration", "autonomy", "child-centered", "diversity", "project-oriented", and "nurturing".

1. Collaboration is such a key part of Duke School's teaching methodology that they don't know how to handle it when a child has difficulty socializing with peers. The same is true for autonomy -- a lot of kids have difficulty pacing themselves for larger assignments, and the methodology doesn't allow much wiggle room for accommodating these kids.
2. It seems that the child-centeredness only goes so far up the hierarchy; from what I've seen and heard, the decisions made at the top levels do not seem to take into account the recommendations of the teaching staff. The most obvious example of this is the new Middle School buildings, which are sensorily-overloading -- due to their cavernous, echoey design and the lack of sensory barriers between different areas so that students are not distracted by sights and sounds from unrelated activities.
3. Cutting the hours for the school counselor undercuts the school's commitment to diversity (nonstandard students are more likely to need counseling), child-centeredness (the school can afford to build almost an entire new campus but can't afford even one part-time counselor for the Middle School?) and nurturing.