We Choose Detroit: Matt, Kim and Baby “C”

We choose Detroit for its educational choice. Detroit forces active parents to really think about what they need to do to raise their child in a city, what types of experiences will enrich my child’s life? What experiences are right at our fingertips that would otherwise take over an entire weekend if we lived outside of the city? Most particularly, what type of schooling can I provide to my child? The city can certainly look like a place where educational doors are closed but at a deeper look, it is a place where educational doors can open. In a city like Detroit, autopilot is not an option if you want to ensure your child a fulfilled life long love for learning and personal growth. The neighborhood public school in Detroit may actually be an option for your child, but it is not the only option or it may not be the right option at all. For my husband and I, as we have learned of the mounting pressures that state and federal government have placed on children, to test, test, test at the expense of childhood, we began to look elsewhere for schooling opportunities. In our neighborhood, we found the Detroit Waldorf School which has been a very active member of our community. So active, that it asked me to join the school board of trustees as a community member (unbeknownst to them at the time that they asked, my husband and I were expecting our first child). After careful investigation of the school I embraced the opportunity.Detroit Waldorf School is a Rudolph Steiner School. It is a school that looks and functions like a school that I would have only dreamed of attending when I was a child. As an active member of our community, it also offers many resources to parents who may not be a part of the school community. Childhood development talks, book clubs on parenting, a weekly parent tot interactive class and an amazing little toy store with imaginative wooden toys and great books and other interactive toys are just a handful of the offerings of the school. What is so special about this school is that it is a place where childhood is preserved but learning and discovery is woven into every activity of the day, though many activities look like they are just playful and silly, they are very serious activities that are intended to bring forth a child’s discovery of the world and deeper understanding of the standard themes and subjects taught in all schools.

Being a private school it allows for all of this enrichment with freedom to teach children what will make them a whole creative person and a lover of history, arts, mathematics, science, and most importantly other human beings. Being a private inner city school, Detroit Waldorf School is challenged to and successfully brings its education to a diverse student body including diversity of family structure, learning style, race, regional geography and socioeconomic diversity. Offering such a brilliant education while allowing the children to interact with a diverse group of people only makes the experience the richer. There is no need for standardized tests, teachers take the time to painstakingly assess each individual child, that child’s abilities and the child’s own personal progress through out the school year and over multiple school years to track the individual child’s own improvement and accomplishments. The child’s development trumps school achievement and the result is that the school is a school excellence that brings forth amazing, academically prepared, grounded children to a place where they can one day grow into an adult ready to take on the world.

My personal love of the Detroit Waldorf School and our desire to send our child (or children) there was fostered by a need to ensure a future educational path for our daughter that is not as linear as it could have been had my husband and I chosen another city to raise her that had simple answers to the educational challenges that we all face as parents. Despite many criticisms that blanket the news here, there are many excellent public schools in Detroit, there are also many decent charter schools, but, there are also many other considerations and choices here too including an amazing selection private schools. What is great about Detroit is the chance to choose the right educational option for your child and your educational philosophy. My husband and I are happy to have found a school that aligns so perfectly with our philosophies even though we shamefully may not have even come close to considering a private school as wonderful as the Detroit Waldorf School as the best option had we chosen to raise our daughter anywhere else.

With love from Detroit.

Kim, Matt & Baby “C”