Archway School

Message from Head

October 2008

It is my great pleasure to welcome you to our website and my sincere hope that it provides you with an overview of our wonderful school, mission, and community. 

School websites and even the Internet as we know it didn’t exist when years ago my husband and I began our search for a kindergarten for our son.  For information we turned to friends, the yellow pages, and the schools themselves for information. New to the area, we had little first-hand knowledge of any particular school. Even what we could glean from conversations amongst parents at the playground seemed to follow no discernable pattern. Each tour or open house was lovely and informative. Each school’s mission was in its own way compelling.

Submitting applications to half a dozen schools and later sorting through the handful of placement offers, we wished for some magic formula to help make the decision (number of science classes, plus expected volunteer hours, minus student to teacher ratio, divided by tuition payments?).  In the end we chose Archway.

Why? I can only say that it came down to a sense that here was a place we could envision our child thriving, learning, and having fun; a conclusion not calculable through a formula, but reached by an instinctive, impossible-to-articulate, gut feeling. In our subsequent searches for a high school and then college for our son, we again relied on our collective family instinct and “went with our gut.” And we haven’t been sorry.

Assuming you are similarly embarking on a search for your own child’s school, you already have great advantages over those of us who didn’t have technology or the internet as a resource. But even the best website can guide you only so far. You’ll no doubt visit six or seven schools, ask friends for their opinions, get lots of advice; and in the end, you will rely on your instincts. Like me, you may learn a few things along the way:

1)      What distinguishes one independent school from another is not so much the caliber of its curriculum as the culture of its community.

2)      A school that authentically values respect and empathy will have teachers and staff who authentically model respect and empathy.

3)      A great deal of what children learn at school is what they learn when they’re not in the classroom.

4)      Independent schools are not havens from the “real world”; they are places where the world becomes real.

If you visit Archway, and I hope you will, you will discover a school where children are happy and engaged. You will meet welcoming teachers and families who reflect the diversity of the Bay Area, who have warm relationships with their students, and who are supportive of one another. You will see classrooms buzzing with activity and where learning is hands-on. And perhaps you will leave your visit feeling as I did many years ago, that this is a place you can envision your child thriving, learning, and having fun.

Sincerely,

Sarah Flowers

Head of School