Choosing the Right School for your Child

As a parent, selecting the right school for your child is essential. You’ve googled schools in the Memphis area and asked for recommendations from anyone who will listen. The first thing you learned is that everyone is an expert: friends, family, co-workers all are adamant that their choice is the right one for your child.

WHAT YOU SHOULD ASK:

With so many opinions about educating your child, it’s best to determine what’s most important to your family. That way you can be sure to ask the right questions as you evaluate the options.

Here are a few questions you may want to consider:

Which school is going to best prepare my child for college/adulthood?

Where will my child have the opportunities to discover their interests and passions?

Is this school going to provide stability through my child’s developmental stages?

Do we want a school that focuses on a certain age group or do we want a school that our children can grow and mature in through 12^th grade?

What are the benefits of choosing co-education over single-sex education?

PREPARE THEM FOR THE REAL WORLD:

The faculty and staff at Lausanne Collegiate School get these questions from families taking tours every day. While visiting Lausanne families can expect to experience an environment that:

• Enables girls and boys to learn and to work together from an early age, providing them communication outlets and activities that help students gain both self-esteem and grow their respect of viewpoints different from their own; creating a mini-version of the world they’ll grow up to inhabit is the best way to prepare them for their future.
• Recognizes learning styles shouldn’t be based on gender stereotypes but individualized to each student. Teachers work to ensure that each child receives an engaging and active educational approach tailored to each child’s needs. Providing continual opportunities to succeed, as well as self-reflection, empowers children to put learning into context for themselves and the world around them.
• Asks teachers be innovative in their approach to the development of the individual talents, intellects, creativity, and character of students. An active learning environment with projects, discussions, experiments, and civic engagement leads to happy students willing to give their best, confidently take on challenges, and uplift their shared community.

“Eventually, your child is going to interact and work with people with backgrounds very different than their own,” explains Laura Trott, Lausanne’s Director of Admission. “The school years are a time for children to learn how to communicate and develop relationships with people that may have a different perspective than they do.”

As a co-ed school with students from over 55 different countries and over 47% students-of-color, you’d be hard-pressed to find a school offering students with more diverse viewpoints than Lausanne. Here are what they believe to be the most important things to know as you search for a school:

SEE IT FIRST-HAND!

There’s no better way to see if a school is the right fit for your child than to experience it for yourself. Tour the school and see if the people teaching the classes are engaging students, instead of just lecturing to them. And watch if the students seem engaged with learning! Look on the school website for upcoming admissions events, or call and tell them you’d like to visit campus. Lausanne’s can be found at https://www.lausanneschool.com/admissions.