<p>Well, I went to dd's school to ask for recs, and spoke with 2 teachers. Next thing we knew, this became the rumor of the day for the entire school! Even before dd had a chance to tell her friends that she is applying, this information was divulged quite loudly by a teacher (and it wasn't even one of the ones I had spoken to!) in front of her friends, who had a pretty strong reaction to this. dd is pretty upset about how it was shared, and so am I. Is this unreasonable? Should I have asked the teachers to keep this information confidential for the time being?</p>
<p>What we have here is a failure to communicate. </p>
<p>I guess your D wanted to talk to her friends about the situation on her own terms, which is only fair. </p>
<p>I am assuming that you knew this and did not relay that desire to the teachers in such a way that they would keep it quiet.</p>
<p>Now the teacher probably should have quietly congratulated your D on her choice of schools to apply to and used that as an excuse to ask whether it is OK to make an announcement (although such announcements shouldn’t be made until the acceptance letter arrives). Many kids are shy about such things and don’t want the publicity.</p>
<p>Clearly the one of the teachers started scuttlebutt by divulging this information to someone else in the staff without properly checking to see if that was OK with either you or your D.</p>
<p>I guess you should be a bit upset about the result, considering that the teachers should consider the feelings of the student before anything else. And unfortunately, yes I guess with this bunch you have to explicitly tell them to clear it with your D before talking to others. Sad.</p>
<p>Now that careless teacher has ratcheted up the pressure on your D until the acceptance announcements come in.</p>
<p>I know that my D when she hand delivered the forms to her chosen teachers asked them not to discuss it as nothing was certain at the time of application. When her decision finally was made (late in the school year), she privately told her friends and teachers. No big announcement was made in respect to her feelings.</p>
<p>I guess we were lucky.</p>
<p>I totally agree with that, goaliedad - my mistake was in assuming this type of information to be discreet simply because i requested a private meeting with the teachers to discuss it, behind closed doors.. As result, we now have to think about damage control.</p>
<p>Yes, you should have specified, but in my opinion, what those teachers did was gossipy, immature, and plain insensitive. You have a right to feel a little ticked.</p>
<p>I agree with prettyckitty. It was unprofessional.</p>
<p>This is indicative of the school’s character. We kind of got the same immature behavior from some of the teachers when my boys requested recs. It seemed that the teachers viewed it as a personal attack (Paranoia) on them and the school. Kind of so we’re not good enough for you or what are you something special. Well yes my children are special and if you as a teacher want to do what’s best for the sttudent then set your sophomoric attitude aside. </p>
<p>I tend to get over this kind of petty stuff immediately. This behavior should confirm your decision to leave and do what’s best for your daughter.</p>
<p>Same thing happen with my d last year and we did ask that they keep it on the DL. But somehow it still got out and it was thru one of her teachers that had not been asked to write a rec. A lot of gossip goes on the teacher’s lounge. I agree with Britham, there’s paranoia and belief that it is an attack somehow on the school. It’s ashame that your d has to face her friends sooner than she was planning to on her plans for applying. But if they are anything like my d’s friends, their interest will soon wane and they will soon go back to thinking primarily about themselves.</p>
<p>All of the above, except that I’d emphasize that it’s actually not a big deal. The kids’ reaction to the news was going to be what it was. Your daughter will recover by Monday. I wouldn’t change a thing about how I go about doing anything or responding or pursuing this. Come next time…well, now you know.</p>
<p>EDIT:</p>
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<p>Awesome! Kids are so consumed with things like how they look and come across to others that you’d think it would so easy to convince them that nobody notices. When you try to tell your child that all the other kids are the same and they have nothing to worry about because their friends aren’t so attentive once they go beyond their personal sphere of consciousness, you find that your child is too self-centered to think that all the other kids aren’t obsessing over them with equal vigilance.</p>
<p>I have had similiar concerns about our school and I am actually concerned that one of the coaches will try to sabatoge my son’s efforts to apply to BS. He was very upset that he might loose my son on his lax team and had already expressed his distress to a couple other teachers. It was nice to know that he is a valued member of the team, but hopefully no one will be unethical and hurt his chances to get into BS.</p>
<p>I found the best one way to deal with this is to take a two-pronged approach. </p>
<p>First, make it clear that the possibility of him staying is irreversible. A bad recommendation/reference, etc. will not be fruitful in manufacturing the desired outcome of keeping him at the school.</p>
<p>Second, work to instill a sense of pride in the school for doing such an excellent job of preparing your child for this next, exciting step. Have them feel a sense of ownership in the success of his application. Get them invested in it. I had to keep from gagging, but I wrote a letter to the head of the school praising the work of all the teachers and advisors, etc. who worked so hard to mold him. I even used some of the language that I was using in my parental statement…in hopes of planting seeds. The head of school asked for permission to circulate to the teachers and that’s what happened. I had several teachers a coach thank me over the next couple of weeks for my kind words. </p>
<p>I have no idea if it actually helped, but I felt more confident that they were on board.</p>
<p>Thank you all so much, these are wonderful ideas. I would definitely try the letter approach too. We knew some things about the application process, but I must admit I did not foresee this added layer of complexity of dealing with current school!</p>
<p>Here’s something my son’s school did that really threw me for a loop…and I didn’t learn about it until a dean of admissions told me about it – in mid-March!</p>
<p>The school didn’t provide a transcript. They just sent copies of the report cards. Comments and all. In a way, it’s actually a very candid insight for the schools. The teacher comments come from every subject, including electives and PE. And they are written for the parents as the audience, not gussied up for a boarding school application. And that would be fine if (a) that’s what was in everyone else’s application, and (b) we had known what the Admissions Committees would be looking at so that we would have the option of taking a moment to address anything we might have felt needed to be explained or clarified.</p>
<p>The bottom line, though, is that sharing these comments with the boarding schools was weird. Had the teachers themselves understood that these middle school comments would be seen by others and reviewed critically, I’m fairly certain the teachers would have taken more care and put more thought into them. I know some of the teachers looked like idiots with their comments (bad spelling; baby-talk encouragement, etc.) and that didn’t foster a sense of confidence that my son’s school was very challenging. But the dean pointed me to a comment made by for one of his 6-week PE rotations. The rotation was lacrosse and since the PE teachers didn’t know anything about the game, I was the rules instructor and taught the kids drills. And he didn’t respond well to dad being at school. He hated that unit. And the comment reflected it; but it was coach-to-coach, not coach to boarding school. At the time I regarded the candor as a courtesy. I doubt the coach, knowing that it would be weighed as part of his applications, would have shared so generously.</p>
<p>I firmly believe that no one thing – besides, say, a drug bust – kills an application. But it was a shame to see an extra straw or two needlessly loaded onto the camel’s back.</p>
<p>Anyway, be sure to find out what your child’s school is sending. The recommendations are confidential. But there’s no reason why you can’t obtain a copy of the same transcript that they are sending to the boarding schools. Having that information may help you (as the parent) or your child better shape the applications to complement, offset, clarify or emphasize points that come out in the transcripts.</p>
<p>I assumed that full, unvarnished copies of report cards is what all schools always send (and what all schools expect to receive). Moreover, I also assumed that is what the boarding schools send to colleges for applicants. Is that not the case?</p>
<p>Transcripts and report cards are different. A transcript is a summary report of the final grades assigned and courses taken. In middle school – in many cases – the report card includes the grade, an effort score, and comments sections for the teachers. That’s why parents tell their kids to get their grades up…and they aren’t pitching fits on the college section about teacher comments. If report card comments went out to colleges, the college sections on CC would be flooded with threads of parents and students who are beside themselves over negative comments – or even the lack of comments – that take some of the shine off of their stellar numeric or alpha grades.</p>
<p>But I don’t know much about what colleges expect. The dean of admission at one of the AEDSCH schools thought it was odd. Not unheard of, but odd enough to point it out. </p>
<p>The schools only ask for grades, not the report cards. If the comments were a standard part of the application package, then I wonder why those comments are universally omitted from the discussions of chances and best-fitting schools, etc. It’s unusual or people aren’t aware that the comments are being reviewed. Any way you slice it, a warning is needed.</p>
<p>Example: [REPORT</a> CARDS / TRANSCRIPTS](<a href=“http://lvcacs.org/Handbook/repcardtrans/repcardtransc.htm]REPORT”>http://lvcacs.org/Handbook/repcardtrans/repcardtransc.htm)</p>
<p>I am well aware of the difference between a report card and a transcript and reassert that it is my understanding that schools sending report cards is the norm and what the boarding schools expect to receive. It is definitely what AES expected (the only 3 I have specific knowledge of).</p>
<p>Re: boarding schools sending report cards for college apps. – this is merely a guess – I will have to check with college counseling office.</p>
<p>A grid with grades reveals little. It is the teacher comments that detail the course content and the character/nature of the student and his/her work in that class.</p>
<p>Hence the request for recommendations from the current English and Math teachers and a school guidance counselor or principal along with the transcript.</p>
<p>They don’t ask for report cards. The point being that, regardless of whether it’s standard practice or not, parents don’t expect that report cards are being sent.</p>
<p>At one point I thought someone at our kids school saying that only end of term grades/comments get sent to secondary schools (it is a jr prep so nearly all the kids “apply out”). We had been worried about some of the mid term progress reports going - especially the comments. This year however, I asked about seeing exactly what gets sent and I was shown the grid of grades and then it had standardized test scores included (ERB’s, National Foreign Language, SSAT’s from 7th and 8th as well as 9th, etc).<br>
What I have seen on the applications are “Transcript Requests” and I’m assuming our school (since they are “in the loop” so to speak) sends what is expected by the secondary schools.</p>
<p>Our school too is a jr prep with over 80% going to boarding schools each year. I did not mean to imply that mid-term progress reports are sent off with each application. What our school sends is a year end summary of term grades and effort marks for 7th and 8th grade along with brief comments from each teacher. We were responsible for sending the SSAT scores ourselves.</p>
<p>I should add that what is sent to secondary schools is identical to the year-end report card sent home to parents.</p>
<p>Yeah, and that’s all fine and dandy at a jr. prep where the teachers understand that comments are probably going to be shared with admission committees and aren’t just off-the-cuff notes to parents. And it’s all honky-dory when the parents at the jr. prep understand that the report card gets sent in and that the comments that they’ve been reading are going to be read by the Admissions Committee so that the application essays and other recommendations can address any weakness that might be raised or expound on any other gems and pearls that might be sent in via the report cards.</p>
<p>But, for the rest of the world…</p>
<p>…where teachers aren’t writing for an admission committee audience and parents are asking that their child’s grades be sent in, it behooves the applicant and parents to get clarification as to what’s being sent in; try to influence that decision if it’s not to their liking; alert this year’s teachers in all subjects that their comments are going to be part of an application (if applicable); and then ensure that the application is submitted with some cognizance of what the school has sent in to the boarding schools.</p>
<p>*That’s * the point. That’s the lesson. You may not need to bother with that lesson and the point may be something you’re already on top of. I suspect, however, that for the majority of applicants and their parents, it’s something they haven’t considered and could benefit from by knowing how it works.</p>