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Review content:
I toured this school in 2011 and expected the best, given its reputation. The classrooms and facilities are amazing, and the teachers seemed engaged and very nice from what I saw. However I couldn't imagine sending my child here after listening to the director talk for 1.5 hours during the tour. I found her arrogant and condescending. Even though she may not have daily contact with the children, I can only imagine that her attitude filters down into the school. For example, she belittled preschools that have ""stations"" - saying that teachers at such schools often come up with their ideas at 7 am that same morning in the shower, as if teachers at schools with stations couldn't possibly have planned good ideas in advance. Instead, she said, Evergreen often uses ""small groups"" that are formed around the questions and ideas of one or more children. How this works was unclear. Yet when one prospective mother asked more about how these groups were formed, the director was unwilling and unable to explain how, and from my perspective, made the woman look like a fool for asking. In trying to provide an example of how the school follows a child's interests and turns it into a teaching opportunity, the director went on and on about how many years ago, she followed a child's interest in turning a bicycle into a record player, a story which frankly sounded embellished, yet she didn't tell us how the rest of the class was engaged in this task -- it seemed as though the rest of the class simply sat on the sidelines while the one child spent months transforming the bicycle. Another example of her rude attitude: Although she told us that asking children questions just to ""test them"" is rude and insulting to children, when she couldn't remember what the TED conference letters stood for, and she asked the audience, assuming someone would know, and no one could remember, she seemed irritated, as though she couldn't believe that NO one in the audience knew what the letters stood for. Finally, I found it odd that we prospective parents were allowed to roam the school on our own, unchaperoned. We weren't asked to provide ID, etc. and I would not feel comfortable knowing someone who just signed up for a tour could come and roam around my child's preschool at will. I wish the director had been different, and the school itself seems very nice.
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