To ensure that my children received the academic assistance they needed to excel, I withdrew them from a local private school in Kigali, Rwanda and enrolled them into the Chambers International School Home Study Program at post. 

My minor children formerly attended a private school in Kigali, Rwanda.  My son started 4th Grade and struggled academically.  He was placed on probation.  We attributed his difficulties to the adjustment to a new post and school.  We engaged the help of an outside tutor and he was able to matriculate to the 5th grade with minimum passing grades.  He also struggled academically in the 5th grade and in the middle of the school year, his teacher left the school resulting in two interim teachers being assigned to his class.  He had to get used to not one but two new teachers and their teaching styles.  This has not been an easy adjustment for him.  Further, our daughter started in kindergarten at the private school and was also not doing well academically.  The school recommended that she repeat kindergarten because she was academically behind her peers.  This of course prompted me to reach out to the school to gain clarity regarding the issues with her education and find out what resources the school could offer.  At a one-on-one meeting with the primary school principal, she mentioned that due to my son’s grades, he should technically be on academic probation but that the school is giving him a “pass” due to the transition in teachers.  We discussed my daughter's progress and she shared some of her graded work to substantiate the recommendation for her to repeat kindergarten.  I shared videos of my daughter completing some of the tasks at home(i.e., reciting ABCs, counting to 100, reading sight words, etc.) that her teacher says she is having difficulties with in school.  After watching them, the principal was very perplexed because there seemed to be a disconnect between what she is doing in and out of school.  The principal could not explain the issue and stated that she would share the videos with the kindergarten teacher and they would discuss the next step toward determining the root of the disconnect in my daughter's learning.  I never heard back from the principal about the next steps. 

During the meeting, I asked the principal about its resources to assist both children and it became clear that the school lacked the necessary resources to assist them. The only solution that was offered by the principal was engaging a tutor during the summer months.  I asked about in school resources such as one-on-one sessions with the teachers either before, during, or after school and that was not feasible. The principal discussed the upcoming standardized test in May and suggested that we wait and see how they both do on the test. The school year ended and I did not have any confidence in the school’s ability to provide any resources to address this issue.

In order to get a better understanding of the status of the learning challenges, abilities, and potential, we recently sought to have our children independently assessed resulting in the following evaluations by Chambers International School:

     --Our son’s evaluation detailed the following:  He is a bright, energetic student with unlimited potential when his work effort, knowledge, and understanding of concepts, and ability to apply what he has learned is combined subsequent to intentional teaching.  However, his lack of exposure to focused, consistent, intentional teaching has relegated him to the status of being a substandard learner.  Further, the scope and sequence of his curriculum left significant learning gaps of key concepts in math.  For example, during the current school year, he was exposed to the geometrical concept of determining and calculating the area and perimeter of common shapes.  However, the concept was not solidified in the teaching he received.  When asked what these concepts were and the standard formula for calculating such an equation, he did not know how to engage the math problem.  This same assessment was observed for factoring numbers, determining multiples, and adding and subtracting complex fractions when borrowing or when like-denominators are required.  These basic math concepts are foundational for successful advancement in math where new lessons build on those lessons and concepts previously taught.  Without focused, consistent intervention, his lack of mastery in these areas of learning before moving on to higher level of math will prove to be crushing on his future attempts to learn well, despite his enthusiasm and effort.  The same can be said for his reading abilities.  He did not read material well enough to determine the summary and main concepts of what he has read.  He required focused time to read-aloud followed by time to individually engage comprehension questions with feedback to help him focus and improve his reading and ultimately his reading comprehension skills. 

     --Our daughter's evaluation detailed the following:  She is a bright student with unlimited potential when her work effort, knowledge, and understanding of concepts, and ability to apply what she has learned is combined subsequent to intentional teaching.  However, her lack of exposure to focused, consistent, intentional teaching has relegated her to the status of being a substandard learner.  Further, the scope and sequence of her curriculum has left significant learning gaps of key concepts in reading.  For example, during the school year, she was exposed to only one of the five basic phonetic concepts required for reading among young readers.  While she knows all of the basic letter names and some of the basic sounds, she did not receive any exposure to the other four basic reading concepts.  She  was not taught the short vowel sounds, long vowel sounds, blending of letter consonant and vowel sound, special sounds, the rules for reading, or how to combined these in dependant concepts to ultimately phonetically sounds out words which enables children to read and progressively become advanced readers with a love for independent learning.  Because she was not taught these imperative concepts, when asked what these concepts were, she did not know or indicate any semblance of awareness of these concepts.  As a result, it is not surprising that she was ill prepared to engage in a first grade curriculum.  She simply was not taught how to read.  This crippling experience has caused the generalization of her underperformance in other subjects because she cannot read any of the commonly used K5 material in any subject.  The ability to read phonetically is foundational for successful advancement in reading and comprehension in all areas of learning.  Consequently, because she did not know how to read, her performance and achievement was destined to be hampered in every aspect of learning.  Without focused, consistent intervention, her lack of mastery in these areas of learning before moving on to higher levels of education would prove to be negatively impactful on her future attempts to learn well, despite her enthusiasm and best effort.

Due to a lack of keen oversight, their former private school had failed to ensure my children’s grasp, solidification, and mastery of the core learning concepts, skills, and tasks for the requisite grade levels.  Their suggestion of giving a student a “pass” to the next grade level when proficiency with the current coursework has not been achieved is short-sighted and indicative of the unconscionable, unethical, “push-a-child-through” approach to student matriculation when a school is unresourceful and unwilling to find alternatives to help students learn well. This approach had and would continue to set both of my children on a course toward increased learning challenges, as the difficulty of the coursework increased, and substandard achievement due to a lack of mastery of core subject knowledge, concepts, information, skills, and tasks. 

To ensure that my children received the academic assistance they needed to excel, I withdrew them from a local private school and enrolled them into the Chambers International School Home Study Program at post.  The home school learning environment and process was the best option for both of my children.