Have You Checked All the Boxes?

Finding the right boarding school for your child is one of the most critical and expensive decisions you will ever make. You might try to research thoroughly on your own, only to find that most websites look alike, and very few give information on the profile of typically accepted students. Families who want guidance often turn to “independent educational consultants” or IECs.

IECs are professionals who the family pays to advise them on the boarding school search and admissions process. Many offer full-service comprehensive packages that span over a year, and others have shorter packages or an hourly rate. A typical consultation starts with a focus on the student’s background and interest in boarding school. This includes a review of his transcript, testing, activities, interests, and academic successes and challenges of the past. An IEC talks with the student and parents about goals for the future and what they hope to get out of the boarding school experience. Consultants might give examples of nurturing schools, offer learning support, or provide extra help to students when they need it, whether they ask for it or not! IECs discuss the pros and cons of the more rigorous schools or might help a family decide whether to repeat a year. Families might hear about how the schools are different, why a single-sex school might be beneficial, or why a rural, primarily boarding community will feel different than a suburban school with a mix of day students. IECs

There are almost 40 boarding schools west of the Mississippi River. If you drive west from this great river, the landscape and climate slowly change, and, likewise, a perhaps previously unexplored region of boarding schools will begin to unfold before you. Like the Louis and Clark expedition many years ago, this voyage of discovery will be an astonishingly educational experience.

Start anywhere west of the Mississippi, from Manitoba down to Texas; head west across the Great Plains and even past California and British Columbia all the way to Hawaii. On this voyage, you will find the many boarding schools represented by the Western Boarding Schools Association. These boarding schools can rival anything found in the East, and we often offer more! For example, did you know that Hawaii Prep has 80% of the world’s ecosystems and a LEED Platinum Energy Lab? Or that one can safely predict that many of the ice hockey medalists at the Sochi Olympic Games will have attended high school at Shattuck-St. Mary’s in Minnesota? Or that you can simultaneously watch condors fly overhead while on your way to surfing each day at Cate School in Carpentaria, California? Or can we integrate marine biology and oceanography into our curriculum at my school, Brentwood College School, because we are situated directly on the Pacific Ocean?

Academically, our Western boarding schools stack up with the

Since the educational reform movements of the 1970s, significant efforts have been made to promote girls’ improvement within the education system. Unfortunately, instead of creating an equal learning environment, classroom teaching styles heavily favored female students at the cost of the success of their male cohorts. Now, boys are an average of 1.5 years behind girls in reading ability, a gap that persists through college and even upon entering the workforce. Extensive research is being conducted to identify characteristics of positive learning environments for boys and methods for introducing those findings into schools across America.

Active Classroom Environment

The environment a teacher establishes in the classroom is a significant contributor to how effectively students learn. Traditional classroom environments, in which all children are expected to sit quietly while following along with the teacher, presume that all children learn similarly. Those with trouble with the format may fall behind despite their learning capacity. Additionally, this isn’t necessarily a structured environment nor an engaging one that will foster a passion for learning.

This video offers some reasons why your son should attend an all-boys school.

To engage all students, teachers should instead employ an active learning environment. This type of setting stimulates self-motivated learning within a flexible yet disciplined atmosphere. By teaching students learning strategies (a written record of assignments, note-taking strategies, time management techniques, and study methods), educators teach students how to learn or “the

Boarding schools must never forget that they are businesses. Private schools must continually attract new students to stay in business. Public schools have a steady supply of students. That supply is more or less guaranteed by the fact that public schools must take every child living within their jurisdiction. Private schools do not have a built-in supply of new students. They have to go out and find those students the old-fashioned way by selling the school and its attributes to every family they can.

In several ways, boarding schools are a stricter product to sell than private day schools. As much as a boarding school makes great sense regarding its complete package, many parents find it difficult to send their children to a residential school in 9th or 10th grade. Parents may be aware of several boarding schools that family and friends attended. On the other hand, most parents do not know much about individual boarding school programs.

I have written this article about boarding schools that do not have a full-time marketing department in mind. These schools have talented admissions and administrative staff who must wear many hats, often all at once. So, I hope that my suggestions and advice will help them stay on brand. You see, a boarding school has to market its story and make its case to a customer base of families with children in 6th through 9th grades. Reaching these families is the key to complete enrollment in the years ahead. It