I will be an incoming junior to a BS setting - Harkness teaching etc. Coming out of PS - lecture style, spit back school. Can anyone who has made the adjustment between PS to BS share :
what was most difficult issue?
what ended up being easier than you thought?
advice you would give?
Thanks in advance.
Great thread. Very interested in answers.
^^^
Hi! I made that same adjustment last year transitioning as a junior from a very large (3600) PS to a very small (600) BS. I guess the most difficult issue was learning how to filter out the important information from the unimportant information for homework assignments involving textbook reading. In my previous PS, the teacher would hand/send you a pdf or packet of notes that you had to memorize and spit back out on tests or other assignments. At BS, I have about 20-30 pgs of textbook to read for each class and at first this was difficult because I was ingrained with the habit of memorizing everything. I slowly learned to pick and remember big concepts rather than minute details, which greatly reduced the number of unnecessary hours I was spending on homework. I think whether or not the harkness style teaching is hard or easy depends on the student. Generally, I find that BS teaching style greatly helps students who like to talk and discuss and is a little more challenging for students who are on the shy and quiet side. Some teachers record or keep a mental note on how much each student contributes to the discussion and most of the time, part of the overall grade comes from the value of the student’s contribution during class. I’m a naturally talkative individual so transitioning wasn’t difficult at all, and I enjoy the harkness teaching style much better than the boring lecture style classes at PS. My advice would be: be bold during discussions and don’t be afraid to immediately follow up on someone else’s comment. One thing that struck me in particular was how eager each student is, and if you don’t try (at least in my classes) you might not even be able to get a word in. Hope this helps!
thanks Snowfire - great answer and a lot of help. I sent you a message.
anyone else been down this road who can share their experiences?
At prep school, I can’t rely on class participation to bring my grade up, especially in math. That took some getting used to.
For a quiet / shy student, would you target schools that are heavy in Harkness Method, or those that don’t use it as much? Trying to figure out if Harkness would be the best thing for my son, to come out of his shell, or not a good fit for him.
@sunnyschool we have a reserved boy. We felt, after much research and school visits, that Harkness, which fosters collaborative problem solving, was the right environment. In fact the traditional school format has been terrible. We are in a highly rigorous school and it isn’t the content that has been the issue. And class participation is key. We have been told that the teachers are very sensitive to students from different backgrounds and work to integrate them into the Harkness process
@Center Thank you! That is very helpful. We are looking at boarding schools so he can find academic peers (has not happened in public school; he would like to be around smart kids who want to learn, not just memorize). I think Harkness could be so good…he has a lot going on in that head that he could share, if the environment was conducive to that for him. Can I ask where you are - is it Lawrenceville?
A lot of prep schools that don’t specifically use Harkness still have (and expect) a high degree of participation in the classroom. If your son is quiet (as mine was/is), you may want to think about places that honor that while being encouraging. DS used to get “you need to participate more” at his LPS which in some ways he heard as everything from “talk for the sake of talking” to “you have a problem” or “be different”. What he heard at BS was “every time you speak, you advance the discussion. Whenever you do that, it’s helpful for the rest of the class.” He’s still more reserved than a lot of his peers and will never be the kid who elicits groans when he starts to speak (yet again!), but I know he speaks regularly in class and is comfortable sharing and defending his position. One of the important things on his college list was “small classes with high level of discourse.” I’m happy that he was able to get there on his own without feeling like he needed to be different.
Happy to weigh in on behalf of DS who also came from a public middle school. One thing that has thrown him a bit is the fact that he now needs to 1) Listen; 2) Bring salient ideas to the table (everyone knows when you haven’t read, which is a big departure from PS where no one read); 3) Comment on others’ ideas/points; and 4) also TAKE NOTES! It’s #4) that’s become the problem in the more Harkness style courses, such as English and History. He is adjusting to juggling all of the above.