Which School Should My Children Attend?
This is the last year my son is studying at Mason Crest. Next September, he will be entering middle school. I have a daughter who is also studying in the same school but she is also scheduled to transfer to another school after qualifying for the Advanced Academics Program in Fairfax county. I can therefore only wish that my children find a second home in the schools they will attend this coming Fall.
Bullying is truly a scourge in schools. It is heartening to see that even the karate school my children attend, we spend quite some time to address bullying.
Bullying comes in different flavors. There is physical which is quite obvious but there are also varieties that are purely verbal and subtle ones that can hurt a child emotionally. And in this digital age, there is likewise cyber-bullying. However, bullying does not happen everywhere and does not affect everyone. Thus, it is useful to examine what factors correlate with the number of instances of bullying in schools. These factors can be divided into two: characteristics of the child and characteristics of the school. Such study has been made by Fink and coworkers in more than 500 primary schools in England. The following are the child factors that they find correlate with being bullied:
- The child is poor.
- The child is black.
- The child has disabilities.
school climate, frequently operationalised as the extent to which students on average feel connected to their school and have positive perceptions of school (and their teachers).It is no surprise then why Mason Crest Elementary School, the school my kids consider as their second home, goes to great lengths just to make their students feel like celebrities.