Students in Langley's preschool program work together on a learning activity.
We have a 3-year-old in Ms. Smith’s class at Langley and he’s had a phenomenal year. He went from sort-of knowing his letters to writing words and recognizing some sight words in a few months. While he’s still three, it feels like he has grown leaps and bounds since he entered Ms. Smith and Ms. Bynum’s classroom four short months ago. Even though he’d been in center-based care since he was an infant, it was still nerve-wracking to send our young child off to a new school. The much older kids and the big district system concerned me - I worried he might get lost or fall through the cracks. But he has thrived, and he loves going to school at Langley. Of course, it was an agonizing decision process to get him there...
We knew from the beginning that we wanted to include our neighborhood school on our list. We also did the open house circuit at various DCPS and charter schools. It was overwhelming. And exhausting and scary and exciting! At every school, we asked about curriculum, diversity, discipline, logistics and so many of the things you can never truly judge until you’re a part of the school. And we saw many of the same parents over and over again doing the same thing. While we expected that the charters we visited would have more “bells and whistles” and creative programs than the DCPS schools, we found that wasn’t always the case. We were impressed with the family engagement efforts at Langley, the focus on social-emotional learning, the size of and engaging activities in the classrooms, and the garden and STEM emphasis.
So we were excited to hear that Langley was going to be part of a pilot “Early Action” program. Early Action means that as an in-boundary family, if we put Langley on our lottery list, we were guaranteed a spot. Once we’d talked with lots of Langley families to get their thoughts and visited the school and met Principal Drumm, we realized we could absolutely see our son there; and a major weight lifted. We just had to figure out where on our list Langley fell.
We put a number of other schools first, and we’ll try again to get our son into one of those incredibly specialized programs, many of them with a bilingual curriculum. But because of how much we’ve loved Langley – its focus on social-emotional learning, the community we’ve become a part of, the diversity of backgrounds of kids and parents, the incredible learning and love our child has encountered in his classroom, that list gets much smaller this year. And ultimately, we’ll be thrilled to be back next year as a part of this amazing community!
So, good luck and we hope you’ll consider joining our Langley Family! Come check us out and meet the Principal and parents and see the school at our upcoming open houses:
Tuesday, Jan. 9, 9:00 to 10:00 a.m.
Tuesday, Feb. 13, 9:00 to 10:00 a.m.
Tuesday, March 13, 9:00 to 10:00 a.m.
Tuesday, April 10, 9:00 to 10:00 a.m.
By Callie Carroll
So we were excited to hear that Langley was going to be part of a pilot “Early Action” program. Early Action means that as an in-boundary family, if we put Langley on our lottery list, we were guaranteed a spot. Once we’d talked with lots of Langley families to get their thoughts and visited the school and met Principal Drumm, we realized we could absolutely see our son there; and a major weight lifted. We just had to figure out where on our list Langley fell.
We put a number of other schools first, and we’ll try again to get our son into one of those incredibly specialized programs, many of them with a bilingual curriculum. But because of how much we’ve loved Langley – its focus on social-emotional learning, the community we’ve become a part of, the diversity of backgrounds of kids and parents, the incredible learning and love our child has encountered in his classroom, that list gets much smaller this year. And ultimately, we’ll be thrilled to be back next year as a part of this amazing community!
So, good luck and we hope you’ll consider joining our Langley Family! Come check us out and meet the Principal and parents and see the school at our upcoming open houses:
Tuesday, Jan. 9, 9:00 to 10:00 a.m.
Tuesday, Feb. 13, 9:00 to 10:00 a.m.
Tuesday, March 13, 9:00 to 10:00 a.m.
Tuesday, April 10, 9:00 to 10:00 a.m.
By Callie Carroll
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