By Diane Beal and Tehani El-Ghussein
We first learned of KCA over a decade ago, when we were young(er) nonprofit professionals and our first child was just an infant. Diane took a tour of KCA while working in youth violence prevention and was blown away by the culture, inclusion, and overall individualization of education. When our oldest reached school-age, we only considered public school. First and foremost it was an issue of cost, followed closely by value alignment and a commitment to public education. Elementary school began, and we loved it. It was a supportive, caring space where our child built strong friendships and community. Teachers knew students’ names, and racial, ethnic, socioeconomic, and other aspects of diversity were represented and accepted in the children and families we saw. We anticipated this welcoming environment would continue into middle school. Unfortunately, the middle school climate quickly became unbearable. Our eldest is a kid who could easily blend into the background amidst chaos, but he came home, daily, deeply affected by the violence he saw inflicted on others and/or heard about. It caused him fear throughout his day. After several meetings with school personnel, we quickly lost hope in leadership and started looking for an alternative. KCA topped the list.
We started the process with a tour and then a shadow day. In our experience, tours and open houses are a really important step for the family to get a peek at the school, but shadow days allow the potential student an opportunity to observe, experience, and assess the fit. Shadowing was the turning point for Mazin, to spend the day as a student alongside another student who acted as a guide. He came out of the building that day expressing and exuding a feeling of calm, more relaxed than he had felt since starting sixth grade almost three months prior. To be clear, our kid is an introvert, so this was an incredible accomplishment after spending a day with people who were virtual strangers to him. The small class sizes allow each child to connect with one another, work through changing social dynamics together, and allows their teachers to identify learning gaps to help create tools that fill gaps. This has been crucial for our middle-schooler, who spent a portion of their late elementary years impacted by the unstable learning environment of COVID. I know many students come to KCA to pursue art, theatre, music and those are INCREDIBLE opportunities for students at KCA. But, truly, any child’s passion can be fostered in this environment because faculty and staff get to know each student and help them explore those interests. I mean, our 13- year-old loves coffee, fishing/being outdoors, animals, cooking and working with metal. He does not consider himself ‘creative’ in a traditional sense. In fact, he grumbles when he is assigned a project that includes the creation of a visual image or model. During one of his first science assignments that required building a model, he asked his teacher Janet if he could make his project out of cake. Janet approved, so long as it met assignment criteria. He successfully completed the project, supported using the tools he enjoyed, and the whole school… well, they got to eat cake. It was a big model! Now in 8th grade, he has a reputation of incorporating baked goods in his projects, and it seems to be a win/win learning situation for all involved.
To be honest, working in education and nonprofit, paying for private school was not in our plans. Please don’t let that stop you, if you’re in a similar position. Financial aid may be available. While KCA’s cost is comparable with other private schools, its environment of care, encouragement, diversity, inclusion, creativity and social justice simply is unmatched. As a multi-ethnic queer family, it was crucial to find a place that our children ‘fit’ and a community to nurture them, especially at this point int their lives. To have our family’s philosophy and world view modeled at school is such a powerful experience. We hope to welcome other families searching for the same experience for their middle schoolers.
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