<p>I’m curious if any of the applicants (or their parents for that matter), have thoroughly gone through a prospective school’s staff directory and analyzed the instructor’s credentials.</p>
<p>I think that this perhaps is a missed opportunity to get a feel for the classroom at a school. </p>
<p>Are the instructors, young and energetic?</p>
<p>Or have the instructors been around the school for ever and are an institution?</p>
<p>What are the backgrounds of the instructors?</p>
<p>Did they attend prep school themselves?</p>
<p>Where did they do their undergrad work and their grad work?</p>
<p>Are the educational backgrounds very similar (are there many who went to the same schools) or is each one different?</p>
<p>Did they teach at another prep school before coming to this school?</p>
<p>Or did they escape the public schools?</p>
<p>Or did they instruct at a university?</p>
<p>How many of the instructors have additional duties as coaches, dorm parents, or other extracurricular leaders (how integrated are the instructors in your non-classroom life)?</p>
<p>I know that you won’t know who you instructors are until after you’ve sent them your money, but the general feel for a critical department could be very useful in deciding if this school will be comfortable for a student.</p>
<p>Your experiences and comments are always welcome.</p>
<p>The answer is yes. At my son’s school there was a great mix of all of the above. There were a few teachers who had been at the school for 25 or 30 years and were amazing and, as you said, “institutions”. Every year there were several alumni donations made honoring them. There were also a number of young teachers- interestingly, Williams turns out a lot of prep school teachers. There were also a few public school escapees, and they seemed especially appreciative of the level of intellectual curiousity at the boarding school. One of these teachers (an older man) lived about 4 miles from campus. My son would run to his house in the early morning (6am) and the teacher would drive my son back to campus, stopping to pick up a Wall Street Journal for my son on the way. To me, that defined what we were getting from this environment.</p>
<p>goliedad, you are describing middlesex instructors. By the way, I have found that St. Andrews seems to have the largest former students that come back to teach. That says alot about SAS</p>
<p>I’m sure that you are describing many prep school instructors. My comment on Mx is because of my research for obvious reasons.</p>
<p>With my daughter’s schools the most common boarding school attended was Tabor, undergrad school was Colby, and grad school was Dartmouth.</p>
<p>I look at these schools and yes, the feel of my D’s school represent these types of schools. The instructors do bring the culture of where they came from. The headmaster previously was at Colorado Rocky Mountain School IIRC and matches up well with the outdoor, independent feel that the school has as part of its culture.</p>
<p>I just think for the various applicants who are outside of New England, they can catch quite a few clues about a school culture and feel from the instructor biographies. This would be helpful in determined whether a school is a good fit for somebody.</p>