The Difference Between Schools - ISA and Corte Madera

Alex has finished his third week at the International School of Amsterdam (though he was sick a lot of this week, so he hasn't actually done three full weeks). Mike and I have attended a new parent orientation, a US parents get together and back to school night.

It may still be too early to tell, but here are the observations we have about the difference between the school Alex is at now compared to his US middle school, Corte Madera.

Our first observation is that Corte Madera is an exceptional school. Alex is way ahead in most of his classes which is a testament to how well Corte Madera teaches kids.

Our second observation is that the way kids learn at ISA is different from how they learn at CMS. ISA is an international baccalaureate (IB) school, so there is much more emphasis on teaching kids "how to learn" and develop critical thinking skills instead of teaching them rote memorization of facts.

For every subject the kids are graded on four aspects. In each subject, the four aspects are different (for example, PE looks much different than Individuals and Societies), but they tend to follow these basic guidelines:

A: Did you memorize the facts?

B: Can you show that you know how to acquire new facts going forward?

C: Can you show that you can be creative about how to solve problems in the future?

D: Can you apply this knowledge to other settings?

In addition, there is a lot of "reflecting" on both what was learned and how it was learned. When we talked to an ISA student last January and asked him why ISA was different, I specifically remember him saying "I get very tired of writing a 'reflection' after every unit."

Another thing that has struck us about ISA is they try to do a lot of cross-discipline work. For example, in science they are going to be studying space and at the same time in English they will have to write a science fiction story that includes something they learned in science. Similarly, in Mandarin the units are "work", "clothes", "food" and "society" and for each of those they are going to be using the discussion of the vocabulary to talk about the cultural aspects of each of these topics.

Finally, it appears that the curriculum at ISA is much more flexible than it is at public schools in California. Several times at back to school night the teacher said "Then we might get to talking about XYZ - we'll have to see if we have time at the end of the year." This seems much less rigorous than the public schools - who are obviously having to adhere to strict mandates.

It's not clear that ISA or Corte Madera is better or worse, but it has been interesting to see the differences.

It's possible private schools in California are similar to ISA. Having never attended (or had a child who attended) a private school, I obviously can't know. But I thought it might be useful to hear how things are different with Alex's Amsterdam school compared to CMS.