4040 Risa Cir
San Diego, CA 92124

My daughters have both been at TES since kindergarten. We are in the Spanish immersion program and have found it to be wonderful. My girls could read, write, and understand Spanish out in the community by the 3rd grade. There are different learning styles with teachers, as at any school, and I think this is what makes learning even more powerful. For example your child's Spanish teacher could be a native speaker from Mexico, or a native speaker from Spain, or a Spanish teacher with Spanish as a second language. My girls were exposed to different teaching styles, accents, and cultures. There were a couple of teachers that I wasn't the biggest fan of, however, my girls were always happy and have enjoyed all of their classrooms; As a parent I can manage working with teachers that have different styles of teaching than I prefer. In terms of parent engagement I think there is plenty of opportunity to get involved as little or as much as you want. As for the principal - we have had an amazing experience. In first grade my daughter was struggling at morning drop off, it was chaotic, and at the time my daughter was experiencing a lot of anxiety. She was demanding we go back home and I told her we would have to go see the principal if she couldn't calm down enough to enter the classroom with the other students. To my surprise this was not the threat I thought it would be and she agreed that yes she wanted to speak with Mrs. Viavada. When we got to the office, the principal was about to go into a meeting. She saw my daughter was upset, asked the meeting to start without her and took the time to talk with my daughter. I later found out she was nervous about her Spanish presentation that day, so the principal had her practice the presentation until she felt comfortable and was able to go back to class. I was so impressed that Mrs. Viavada took time out of her very busy day to make sure my daughter felt comfortable at school. In terms of combo classrooms - yes there are combination classes of different grades when necessary. It is my understanding this is because of budget cuts and student enrollment. If there aren't' enough students to fill an entire class, 2 smaller classes may be put together to create the combo class. This is something many public schools need to manage and is not unique to TES. Lastly, yes the school counselor is also a math teacher because she is a credentialed teacher in addition to being a counselor.