I was a student here from preschool till 5thgrade.
I write a review every year, but it gets removed every year.
I'm 20 now, and I will tell anyone who would listen that this school TRAUMATIZED me to this day.
[Language Arts]
The teachers were ridiculous, I was in the 3rd grade reading newspapers with big words I couldn't understand. Everytime I didn't know what those words were I was expected to ask and "find it yourself in the dictionary". This took time, but nonetheless I was expected to finish the article AND explain what in meant before the class ended. If not, the teacher I had would guilt and shame me for not understanding more. I ended up faking it, trying to memorize lines from the article rather than reading and understanding. Note that this was what I did every day with the exception of our spelling vocab where we had to write them 10x times each every Monday and spelling test every Friday. I dreaded newspapers, the smell makes me nauseous from all the times the teacher rubbed it in my face as if I would understand the words better if it was closer to my face.
[Physical Education]
This was every Tues. They would hire someone off campus to come make us do laps and jumping jacks, but here's the thing. It was only on Tuesdays. On other days you're not allowed to run around even with normal kids play because there were complaints of kids getting hurt.
And thus, "don't run!"
Except on Tuesdays where we had our "mile run". We would get pushed to the limit, exhausted we had to for our grades. You HAVE to build stamina inorder to run those laps, not allowed to during the week, and tested on that one Tuesday. When I transferred to a public school, my mile times were 14minutes and had to build it up for the next 5 years until my sophomore year in highschool before I was able to do 9min laps. Thank God I had a teacher who explained to me how to actually build myself up in my freshman year. I was a little vietnamese girl at a practically all Indian school. Not that race has to do anything with it but I was always teased by the kids for having 'smelly armpits' mostly because I was different than them and that made me self conscious when I did sweat. When I told a teacher they told my family to buy more deodorant instead of stopping the bullying and name calling. I still have underarm insecurities to this day but it took years to get me to a level of comfort that didn't cripple me everyday.
[Music appreciation]
Each student in grades 1-5 had to pay $12 for a wind instrument. The music teacher was also rented out basically and told us that with the $12 from each student she was instructed to buy us cheap dollar store songflutes that we're priced at $1.50 each. She felt horrible and apologized to all of us because we all wanted to learn how to play an actual flute. The rest of the money went to the "mother's day tea party" but honestly I think the school just pocketed that as profit.
[Speech and Debate]
All debates are scripted. We have to come up with points and the teachers would mix and match them so when we presented to our families during events like the mother's day tea party it would seem like we're really learning something. All students can't pick their side by the way, just a topic and the teacher picked what you had to argue for. It was predetermined who was going to win or lose the debate so those 'awards' don't mean anything.
[Restrooms]
One teacher walked into blood in the restrooms. Being one of the bigger, more developed girls there, they assumed that the blood was from my period and had me clean the fluids. I was a 4th grader at the time and it could easily been a nose bleed or something but I was sent to clean it instead of the teachers who had that cleaning duty. I was humiliated in front of my class and forced to do it on my break. I came back to my desk in tears and the teacher told me "stop crying or I'll make you clean up the snot from the desk too. Those desks are $175" I can't remember this teacher's name.
Teachers I remember: Pooja, Anjana, Nayak(she was kind to me), Principal Ali.