2026-2027 Edition
Education
Guide
School Choice: Finding the Right Fit PAGE 7
Learning Styles: How Kids Learn Best PAGE 19
The Power of Mentoring PAGE 11
Parent-Teacher Conferences & What to Know PAGE 15
After-School Programs: More Than Just Fun PAGE 23
Why Child Care Programs Matter PAGE 27
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Elementary Trailblazers Live lessons. Strong community. • Live instruction daily + independent learning time • Art, music, PE and digital learning–all live • Small group sessions and office hours for extra support • Pathways exposure: exploring interests through themed learning • In-person field trips and access to district clubs and activities
Middle and High School Trailblazers Independence. Opportunity. Flexibility. • Learn on your own schedule with mostly asynchronous classes • Individual check-in meetings and office hours for extra support • Wide range of electives, honors programming and Pathways opportunities • Full-time or part-time (supplemental) enrollment options • Access to district clubs and activities
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IN THIS ISSUE:
7 11 15 19 23 27
School Choice: Find the right school fit Helping Kids: Why mentoring matters Parent-Teacher Conferences: What to bring and ask Learning Styles: Discover how your child learns After-School Programs: The benefits of after-school fun Child Care: Why quality care matters
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School Choice: Picking the Right School for You
Parents looking for a school for their kids for the first time can be forgiven if they’re confused. There are many different kinds of schools, and it can be difficult to tell the difference between them. Here, is an overview of the 10 most common school choices, so that families can make informed decisions that best serve their particular needs.
instruction often emphasizes hands-on learning. Unlike charter schools, however, magnet schools don’t admit students via a lottery but instead try to promote a diverse student body in terms of demographics, while at the same time factoring in the academic merit of students.
Charter Schools
Distance-learning schools, also known as online or virtual schools, are schools where students receive instruction from home, similar to what’s happening during the pandemic but on a permanent basis. They can be public or private, and they often abide by the same educational regulations and standards as brick-andmortar schools. Parents often choose distance-learning schools because they like their convenience and flexibility.
Charter schools are a specific kind of public schools. Like regular public schools, they receive public funding. However, they’re independently operated and have more autonomy than most public schools when it comes to curriculum and instruction. They tend to have a specific educational focus like performing arts or math and science. Students are often selected through a lottery rather than on their academic merit or other factors like demographics.
Magnet Schools Magnet schools are public schools that are open to kids from multiple districts. Like charter schools, they operate alongside regular public schools, have a particular educational focus, and their
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Distance-Learning Schools
District-Zoned Schools District-zoned schools, or neighborhood schools as they’re also known, are the formal name of the regular public schools in your area. These are publicly funded, follow state guidelines for curriculum and instruction, and are open to all kids living within their catchment area (or zone). Most parents send their kids to district-zoned schools because they’re conveniently located and their kids are virtually guaranteed to have their neighborhood friends as classmates.
Language Immersion Schools Language immersion schools are private and public schools in which all or most of the instruction is delivered in a language other than English. The teachers are often fluent in two or more languages. The educational programs are typically designed for students whose native language is English, and they’re great if
you want your kids to become fluent in another language. Common languages of instruction include Chinese, French, Mandarin, and Spanish.
Montessori Schools Montessori schools are private schools that follow the educational philosophy of the Italian physician Maria Montessori who promoted a child-centered approach that includes lots of hands-on exploration. Instead of a one-size-fits-all curriculum, Montessori schools appeal to each individual student’s interests and abilities. Another feature that distinguishes Montessori schools from traditional schools is that teachers stay with the same group of students for several years.
Boarding Schools Boarding schools are private schools where students live and learn together on a campus. You can send your kids to a boarding school from kindergarten right ...Continued on page 9
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up through high school, or for a single school year. They attract kids from across the globe, have high academic standards, offer lots of extra-curricular activities, foster close relationships between teachers and students, and are great if you want your kid to develop their independence and become more mature.
Parochial Schools Parochial schools are private Christian schools that operate under the auspices of local parish churches (hence the name). Parochial schools teach regular academic subjects like language arts, math, science, and social studies in addition to offering religious instruction and prayer services. Parents often choose a parochial school because they want their kids’ education to be grounded in particular religious values.
Special Education Schools Special education schools are private and public schools that serve students with
special needs. Some focus on multiple needs, others on specific learning differences. These can include communicative, physical, and social learning differences like ADHD, autism, and hearing impairment. Teachers are educated to meet the specialized learning needs of students. They often have an extensive support staff of guidance counselors, psychologists, and social workers.
Waldorf Schools Waldorf schools, also known as Steiner schools, are private schools that follow the educational philosophy of Rudolf Steiner, an Austrian philosopher and social reformer who promoted a specific kind of holistic learning that emphasizes practical skills, imagination, and intellectual development. Like Montessori schools, teachers tend to stay with the same group of students for several years to foster a close and intimate mentor - mentee relationship.
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Kids Helping Kids: Why It’s Good For Your Kids To Be Mentors – And Where To Do It
Most people know that having a mentor is really helpful for the person being mentored - the mentee. But mentoring is also good for the person who’s doing the mentoring - the mentor. Research shows that kids who help other kids improve their own leadership, organizational, and time management skills, become more self-confident and patient with others, and feel a strong sense of accomplishment and fulfillment. If being a mentor is such a great thing, where can your kids go to do it?
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u National Mentoring Organizations One possibility is to volunteer with the local chapter of well-known national mentoring organizations like Big Brothers Big Sisters of America or the National Mentoring Partnership. These organizations have formal programs that provide extensive training to anyone who wishes to be a mentor. However, their preference is for young adults aged 18 or older to serve as mentors.
v Local Schools If your kids are younger than 18 and/or there’s no local chapter of a national mentoring organization near you, they can join a peer mentoring program at the local school. Most middle and high schools have mentoring programs that pair up kids from different grades (typically seniors with freshmen) during the school day or at their after-school programs. While national mentoring organizations tend to focus on developing the mentees’ general life skills, like how to focus on the positive in their lives and make good life choices, school-based programs typically focus on enhancing their academic skills, such as how to take better notes in class, how to organize their homework, and how to prepare for exams. My son’s middle school had such a peer
mentoring program in its after-school program, while his high school matches up older and younger students once a week during the regular school day. If your kids are really strong academically, mentoring in a school-based mentoring program may be just right for them.
w Local Community Institutions Another option is to find a mentoring program at your local community center or library that offers mentoring programs aimed at helping kids learn to read, write, and do basic math. If no formal programs exist, some places let kids start up their own informal programs. Our local community center has had many informal programs run by groups of local high school students over the years. So if your kids aren’t afraid to roll up their sleeves and create a mentoring program together with one or more of their friends, this could be a great experience for them.
x Private Mentoring Finally, if your kids are very mature and independent-minded, nothing should
stop them from creating and offering their own private mentoring program. If you know of neighborhood kids who could benefit from having positive role-models in their lives, encourage your kids to meet up with them on a regular basis to serve as their mentors. Mentoring is not only the right thing to do if you have what it takes; it can also help your kids in both the short and long term. Many middle and high schools have a community service component that requires them to volunteer for a certain amount of hours in order to graduate. Participating in an authorized mentoring program often satisfies that requirement; it does at my son’s high school. Your kids can also use any letters of recommendation that they receive about their mentoring activities as part of their college application. Virtually all colleges and universities across the country consider giving back to the community - especially helping other kids achieve their academic potential - a worthwhile goal, and service through mentoring could be an asset during the admissions process.
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Parent -Teacher Conferences: Documents to Bring and Questions to Ask Parent-teacher conferences are one of the best ways to communicate with your kids’ teachers about how they’re doing at school. But what’s the best way to prepare for these conferences? Based on the advice of such well-respected institutions as the National Parent Teacher Association, the National Education Association, and the Family Research Project at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, I’ve compiled a list of important documents to bring and questions to ask.
Documents to Bring u Report cards from previous school years This gives teachers a broad understanding of how your kids have been doing academically so far. It’s especially important to bring report cards if your kids recently changed schools and/or are doing worse academically than in previous years.
v Test scores This gives teachers a good sense of whether your kids are thriving or struggling as testtakers. It’s especially important to bring test scores if your kids attend schools that place emphasis on such scores; teachers may be able to share useful test-taking strategies with you.
w Homework assignments Bring examples of homework assignments that your kids had an easy and a difficult time with, spent little and a lot of time on. This gives teachers a nuanced understanding of your kids’ abilities when it comes to completing assignments on their own.
x Health forms
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Bring documentation for any health-related issues that already have or could affect your kids’ learning, such as asthma, diabetes, or serious migraines. This helps teachers better understand why your kids sometimes need certain accommodations.
A Few Questions To Ask u How are my kids doing academically? Ask questions about how your kids are doing overall, relative to other kids in the class, and in terms of any standards they’re supposed to reach. Also ask questions about how they’re doing on tests, in-class projects, and homework assignments, whether they ask questions when they don’t understand something, whether there are any areas in need of improvement, and how they should go about making those improvements.
v What do you expect from my kids in the coming school year? Ask questions about what your kids are expected to accomplish in the coming school year, which assignments they’ll get to determine whether they’re living up to those expectations, and how those assignments will be assessed (specific benchmarks, standardized tests, grading criteria). Also ask how your kids can best organize their time and what you can do to support them in their learning at home.
w How are my kids doing behaviorally and socially? Ask questions about your kid’s behavior in the classroom. Are they participating constructively in class discussions, talking when they should do that and listening when that’s appropriate? Or do they tend to disrupt the classroom by disturbing other kids? Also ask questions about how they’re doing socially with other kids? Are they thriving and having lots of friends, or do they tend to be isolated and keep to themselves?
x What kind of relationship do you prefer to have with parents? Ask questions about what kind of relationship your kids’ teachers would like to have with you going forward. Do they want to stay in contact with you on a regular basis or only in emergencies? Do they prefer face-to-face, phone, or email conversations? How will they keep you informed about your kids’ progress? Is there anything they’d like you to do before the next scheduled parent-teacher conference?
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Understanding Your Kids’s Learning Styles
As your kids head back to school, one of your top priorities, as a parent, is to help them with their homework. But how do you best do that? To be sure they truly understand the material, it’s useful to know how they learn. Researchers have discovered that there are four major learning styles: visual, auditory, reading/ writing, and kinesthetic. Below are brief descriptions of each learning style and how you can tailor your homework help.
Visual Learners How They Learn: Visual learners process new information by seeing it. A sign that your kids might be visual learners is that from a young age they lingered over illustrations in books and other visual stimuli. Another sign is that they love to draw or paint. At school, visual learners often doodle when they listen to the teacher. It helps them better understand and remember the material.
How To Help With Homework: Have your kids create visual representations of the material they’re supposed to learn. This can be charts, diagrams, figures, maps, and timelines. Other useful tools include color-coded flashcards, sticky notes, and folders. If they have a hard time understanding something, show them how it’s done instead of telling them how to do it. Since visual learners often get distracted from too many visual stimuli, it’s important to keep their study space neat and clutter-free.
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How They Learn: Auditory learners process new information by having it explained to them out loud or by vocalizing it themselves. A sign that your kids might be auditory learners is that they “read” books out loud to themselves, even before they learned to read properly. Another sign is that they love listening to music and singing. At school, auditory learners often hum when they do their work.
How To Help With Homework: Have your kids vocalize the material they’re studying. Making up rhymes and songs will help them better remember it. Have them record themselves explaining the material, so that they can listen to the recordings whenever needed. If they have a difficult time understanding something, explain it to them orally. Since auditory learners are highly sensitive to auditory stimuli, have classical or instrumental music playing in the background when they study.
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learners are especially good at taking notes from their textbooks and from what the teachers are writing down on the blackboard.
How To Help With Homework: Have your kids write down what they’re supposed to learn in an organized way. Have them create detailed study notes, organized nicely into sections with proper headings. Get them to look up information online and in reference material as they work. Since reading and writing require focus, make sure their study space is nice and quiet.
Kinesthetic Learners How They Learn: Kinesthetic learners process new information through hands-on activities that allow them to touch and manipulate objects. A sign that your kids might be kinesthetic learners is that they love creating new things with building blocks or taking things apart to see how they work. At school, kinesthetic learners especially enjoy tactile scientific experiments.
How To Help With Homework: Have your kids study with physical objects. This can be using coins to learn math, or cutting letters to practice spelling. Since touch and movement help kinesthetic learners process new information, encourage them to stretch regularly or move when they study.
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Why After-School Programs Are Great for Kids
As the new school year begins, parents ask themselves whether or not they should enroll their kids in an after-school program. The answer is a resounding “Yes!” Experts agree that after-school programs not only boost kids’ academic performance, they also enhance their social and emotional development, as well as their overall health and well-being.
Academic Performance Kids who attend after-school programs tend to do better academically than those who don’t. They pay more attention in class, are more involved in classroom discussions, develop stronger study habits, and earn higher test scores. Researchers believe that’s because they spend more time doing homework and get the material explained by a wider variety of adults with different teaching styles. After-school programs generally offer more hands-on, experiential ways of learning, which are great for many kids. In addition to their academic tutoring, most after-school programs also offer different extra-curricular activities like art, music, and sports. These activities also have a positive impact on their academic performance. When kids discover they have a particular talent, they gain self-confidence and that translates into better classroom behavior and performance. They also learn important time-management skills. When kids have homework to finish but are looking forward to a favorite activity, they learn how to manage their time so that they can do both.
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Social and Emotional Development After-school programs are great for social and emotional development. Kids spend considerable time interacting with kids other than their regular classmates, including with kids from different grades. This teaches them important interpersonal skills and how to make new friends. They also learn so much from the extra-curricular activities. Whether they’re working together on an art project, a music performance, or are preparing for a sports competition, kids learn how to support one another and solve problems through teamwork. These are extremely valuable lessons that will serve them well for the rest of their lives. Almost all professional jobs require good communication and conflict-resolution skills, and the ability to work well with others.
Health and Wellness
Finally, attending an after-school program is excellent for their overall health and well-being. Most after-school programs teach kids about proper nutrition, engage them in physical activities that are good for their health, and offer them healthy snacks - all in a safe and structured learning environment.
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Why Child Care Is Great For Your Kids
I’ll never forget the first time I dropped off my now-teenage son at day care. He was just three months old, but I had to go back to work and I didn’t have any family members living nearby who could take care of him; dropping him off that first day made me feel really sad and guilty. In hindsight, I didn’t need to worry so much. My son has grown to become a smart, confident, and well-adjusted teen, and apparently so do other kids who were babies or toddlers in day care. Research shows that attending a high quality child care is good for kids in so many ways, and those benefits persist over time.
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Communication and Social Skills In a typical day care, your kids spend their days in the company of many other kids and adults. So it’s not surprising that kids who attend day care develop excellent communication and social skills. They’re well-behaved, good at playing, taking turns, and sharing with other kids, and can solve conflicts with peers on their own. Since they’re exposed daily to a lot of adults with different personalities, they become versatile communicators who successfully interact with people in different situations. That’s certainly the case with my son. Since he was a toddler, he has engaged with confidence with all kinds of adults, including teachers, after-school counselors, and doctors.
Cognitive and Language Development Kids who spend so much time in the company of other kids and adults at day care also develop language skills rapidly. “High-quality daycare focusing on structured educational activities,” says Dr. Noam Shpancer, a clinical psychologist, “has been linked to improved cognitive and language development.” I observed this from my own
experience. When my son first started day care, I was concerned that he’d be confused when spoken to in two languages: English in day care, and Danish (my native language) at home. I was wrong. One of the care givers from South America told me that my son understood Spanish after a year there. With continued Spanish language classes at school, today he’s fluent in all three languages.
Academic and Employment Preparation Virtually all day cares have a daily schedule that includes play, meal, story, song, and nap times. The structured environment makes it easy for the kids to transition to a formal school day, teaching them both discipline and the ability to focus and listen attentively to teachers. These benefits persist over time. One recent study, which tracked a large sample of kids over several decades, found that kids who went to day care were
more likely to earn college degrees, and they had an easier time finding jobs than kids who hadn’t gone to day care.
Health Benefits
Some parents are very concerned about health at day care centers. They hesitate to send their kids to day care, fearing their kids might frequently get sick. They’re not completely wrong: research shows that kids who attend day care get more infections than those who don’t. However, here’s the good news: they build up their immune system so well that by the time they start elementary school, they’re much less likely to get sick than their peers. As Dr. Gail Demmler-Harrison, a prominent researcher of the health benefits of day care, puts it, attending day care “benefits the immune system and the ability to fight infections.”
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Landmark Center in downtown Saint Paul offers free or low-cost programming featuring music, dance and theater. Free to visit, it hosts five museums along with cultural events held year-round.
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Create new memories at the Bell Museum Travel the Minnesota landscape through our world-renowned wildlife dioramas, visit the hands-on Touch and See Lab, and journey through the cosmos in the Whitney and Elizabeth MacMillan Planetarium.
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