@one1ofeach DS has sit down dinner once a week. The kids generally complain about them, perhaps because they have to get dressed up (jacket and tie.) Generally, day students choose not to go. Although ds would rather not have sit down dinners, he often enjoys them once he is there. As a parent, I like sit down dinners! When ds was home, we had dinner together as often as possible (though not in dresses and jackets!) It is good for the kids to have adult conversations, remember how to eat slowly and using their manners, and to interact with kids outside their usual group. Also, it gives the kids an opportunity to be a waiter as a “work-job” for a trimester. This is another thing the kids don’t like but I, as a parent, think is great!
To @one1ofeach - does your kiddo’s seated dinner table have a faculty member present? Usually, a faculty member or a table head is there to help facilitate conversations. For new students who may be shy, the faculty member can help spark a conversation. Unfortunately, some of the faculty members at kiddo’s school have also been shy and don’t facilitate conversation. Just bad luck sometimes.
My kiddo and friends speak very highly of the seated meals at school - its a great way to make acquaintances (and friends) with kids from different grades and different places. It is also great for community building IMHO. I also think it cuts down on certain behaviors that exclude others. Not all of ours are formal or dress-up…but it’s a great tradition. It’s also fun to work as the wait-person (everyone takes turn doing this at our school) or clean-up crew! THERE is a saying @ crickets or chirping…some tables are full of crickets. It’s bad when this happens during your kid’s first “rotation”. It will get better!
My kid does not have them and I don’t really see a good way to incorporate them, as their evenings are jammed with sports followed by clubs/various group rehearsals, they barely manage to get 20 minutes to eat dinner to make it back in time for study hall at 8. I think the only night it would sort of make sense for the boarders would be on Sunday, but that would be quite cruel for the sizable day student population. Or sometimes on Friday, but that is the go out to town/hang out night which I think is a lot better way to get to know people than sit down dinner.
This thread does make me think back to last spring and the discussion of merits of ‘home-like’ vs. ‘college-like’ BS. My kid absolutely wanted the latter, and while it may turn out to be a good choice long term, the transition is tough. So I would take sit down dinners if they also came with less crazy pace at the school, and some adults actually watching over them and caring that they go to sleep at reasonable time, and that their rooms are not straight out of ‘Animal house’. As it is, need to cross my fingers they figure it out on their own.
Mercersburg has sit down lunches every weekday and a formal (jacket and tie, etc) sit down meal every Monday night. There are faculty at every table and the seating arrangement rotates every 2 weeks. I think it’s been a great way to meet different people and I agree that it helps model appropriate behavior and conversation. My son seems to enjoy it - he’s a social butterfly and has a wide variety of friends at school.
Choate does not do sit-down dinners (or didn’t while our son was there). They used to do something similar called “community” lunches, but the kids hated them, so the “new” headmaster eliminated them when he was installed in 2011.
I think this might be a cultural thing among different boarding schools. Formal sit-down meals don’t appeal to our son, so I guess he serendipitously ended up at a school suited to his personality. I don’t have a strong opinion on this issue either way, but I’m pretty sure our son learned appropriate dining behavior and conversation at home, so those traits were not anything we were looking to the school to instill. We were hoping he’d learn how to clean his room and not use the floor as a closet, but no luck there.
I imagine the USMA taught him that, though. 
LOL. I can tell you that the sit down dinners do not come with any of that at our school! The pace is insane. Other parents and I are amazed/dismayed. The kid are walking on a razor and any little blip will cause them to fall. They are all up far past lights out doing work and no adults seems to care or pay attention.
Dear @one1ofeach - that is so sad that “the kid are walking on a razor and any little blip cause them to fall…no adults seems to care of pay attention”…is your student a first-year experiencing this? No need to say what school, but think you might want to address this with your school.
@oneofeach: Agree that if students at your child’s boarding school feel such intense pressure, then something is wrong. Most likely these students were unprepared for a highly challenging academic environment.
Many students do claim that they feel academic presure at Andover & Exeter, and, to a slightly lesser extent, at a few of the other acronym schools, but not to the extent that you describe.
@Golfgr8 @Publisher i guess my son is at an acronym school? It’s a school mentioned here but not the two bigs, and it doesn’t seem that well known.
I don’t mean that the adults are uncaring but there is an expectation that an overwhelming amount of schoolwork will get done and if a kid is also a varsity athlete that’s a lot. He reports that “lights out” is absolutely a myth and not because kids are goofing off. Just because kids have a lot to do. For instance. One friend had 7 tests/papers due last week. That is a LOT of work. Imagine if friend had gotten sick. That’s what I mean by walking a razor. They seem to be just keeping their heads above water but any little wave will send them under.
I followed the homework thread with interest and agreed with the OP about almost everything. I was somewhat dismayed by the way most posters on this board assumed her kid was at fault or doing it wrong. My sons experience is very similar to what she described and I feel like people who have been through it have rose colored glasses on a bit. Or maybe their kids were happy with a B. Or maybe they didn’t have to work for an A. I don’t know. I’m not even sure that the grade is a representation Of how much work my son is doing or not doing.
My kid is doing fine grade wise. Honestly actually better than I expected given that he has a 100 in math ? but reports that there are kids in every class who have failed several tests.
There seems to be a slight edge of “you thought you were smart…here’s reality” but that may just be my interpretation. He went to a smaller school to feel closer to teachers but the teachers seem very rigid in their method. I expected a tailored to the kids approach.
I didn’t feel this way when my older went to school so it’s new and possibly colored by my early disappointment when discussing the math class with the dean.
My son feels like he’s “been there forever” so my observations are all from the outside. Although he would agree with what I’m saying maybe he is less bothered by it because he expected to work like a dog?
Nope. Even the U. S. Army failed that mission. 
“My sons experience is very similar to what she described and I feel like people who have been through it have rose colored glasses on a bit. Or maybe their kids were happy with a B.”
Or maybe just experienced. 
Nothing wrong with Bs at some of these schools. The reality is that very few kids will remain straight A students. The grading scale is different. But, that’s okay and things will be fine. Both parents and students should stop obsessing and stressing about getting a perfect GPA. That’s the message some of us are trying to impart - that’s not “rose colored” but pragmatic.
Well, as I said the work load and amount of time kids are spending does not seem to correlate to grades, as far as I can tell. My son’s best grade is in a class he does zero work in.
I don’t see how being an “experienced” parent makes a parent ok with what I see going on. My son isn’t obsessing over grades, neither am I. The fact that he WILL survive and possibly do so with good grades doesn’t make me think everything is ok.
I meant to add. When he is studying, it is NOT with the intent of getting an A. It is simply with the intent of basic mastery of the material. The tests have been incredibly random and very hard. There is no way he could be doing less work and just accepting a B. Less work would most likely be a failing grade. He is just lucky that he can get an A with what I consider the bare minimum amount of work. Because he is a varsity athlete and a day student I am able in enforce a much earlier bed time than most of his peers who are staying up much later.
But again, I read all the replies to the other thread and honestly have no interest in repeating the “you should calm down, you just don’t understand” posts.
That isn’t unusual. Many kids have areas of strength that come relatively easy to them and areas where they need to work harder. No surprise.
Some kids will excel with only a modicum of effort, some will excel with huge effort, some will have to work very hard for Bs. These schools are attracting the top 20% of higher from other schools. The competition is tougher now. Some students will be mediocre in the new context. That’s just a fact. Im always surprised when that surprises people. These schools are known for rigor.
And back to the topic of the thread, if you choose a school with seated meals, you adapt and engage and learn to deal with it.
Just something else to think about. Several teachers mentioned to us during conferences that if our kid needed to, they would be happy to skip homework for a night or adjust if there were several tests in a day. We hadn’t heard this Freshman year. Also, one of the teachers was in a class kid is doing great in. So, you might ask. I told my kid that sometimes things are bumpy and if you need to ask to smooth it out it’s fine. This is especially true if your kid is taking multiple AP/honors classes.
Honestly, I never would have asked when I was a student and if the teachers didn’t mention it, I don’t think my kid would ever think to ask for a reprieve. One teacher mentioned if there is a late game or something along those lines to send an email. Maybe they tell everyone this, maybe just those kids who always do the work and push through. I have no idea. I do know, the school tries really hard to adjust the work level. Even having a day off or something adjusted by quite a bit can make the difference.
Your kids faculty advisor can also give you a heads up vis-a-vis how your kid seems vs. his/her peer group. Ask them directly how your kid seems to be doing. Ours said kid was pretty stress free ( which is not how I would characterize). I would say my kid is low-medium stress. Adviser said kid is very low stress. hmm.
These schools are known for rigor.
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Of course they are, I just don’t think rigor = bone crushing amount of work for many students. I happen to think that some schools have lost the battle of balance and may need a slight nudge back to that road.
FWIW, I have been speaking to parents at my kids school and pretty much all of them do agree with me. After that they are split into those that think “bone crushing is great cause my kid survived and I am therefore very proud” or “bone crushing was rough but my kid survived and I pray college will now be easy cause that’s what I’ve been told every one of the 4 bone crushing years.”
@Happytimes2001 great idea. I will ask during PT conferences. From what I have been told, kid would think that the answer is “you’re out of luck” but definitely worth asking. Sometimes a parent asking gets a different, and more reasonable, answer!
Perhaps we can return to the topic of seated meals instead of derailing on the topic of HW/grades/etc at the OP’s kids school. That topic seems well covered on many other threads created by the OP.
@one1ofeach I said schools with seated dinners must be slower-paced because you need everyone to have at least an hour (for lunch) or 90 minutes+ (for dinner, assuming they expect the kids to shower and dress up for it) available at the same time for the meal. Which just does not happen at our school, lunch periods are all over the place depending on which classes you are taking. Dinner Friday would be the only sort of doable time but there are usually some games on Fridays and otherwise it is the ‘hang out, chill and have fun’ night and I can’t imagine anyone would want to give that up.