Westgate

A hidden gem in South Austin! Registering at Joslin was the best choice we have made since moving to Austin. The administration is caring and helpful. The PTA goes above and beyond to make Joslin a fun and beautiful campus. The small community is special and incredibly welcoming. My kids have tons of after school enrichment to choose from and every teacher we have had genuinely loves and cares about my child and their success. Aside from english, Students can choose to learn in Spanish or Mandarin… or both! We love this school!

Our four year old is entering her second year, and is still so much in love with learning. She has already started reading, is eager to go to school each day, and has truly blossomed. Her guide is skilled and available to parents. We have been very happy with the AMS Great Northern campus. Its effectiveness has been demonstrated by our daughter's progress as a student and as a person.

This is a hard review to write because our children have wonderful friends at AMS. their guides seem to mean well and want to care them. The problems are with the administration, which seems to have some sort of philosophical thing against actually communicating with parents about what is going on with our children. They talk about how they are "open communicators" but in reality when anything is not exactly the way they see it, parents will hit a brick wall trying to get information about what is going on. One of our children was bullied was bullied by a staff members' daughter who was much older than she was, and despite it happening repeatedly, the staff essentially refused to give us any real information about it. We heard the same thing from other parents about this same child and other staff children doing things like kissing younger children without permission, writing curse words on younger children's notebooks and making fun of them because they couldn't read it, and much more. These kinds of things happen at ANY school, but at AMS, the staff simply chooses to not tell parents that are involved. No written reports, no calls, nothing, even though they know about it. Many times parents only find out weeks later when children are anxious and only then, do we get the real story out of the school.They do this with learning issues too. They won't share things like reading assessments with parents, even if our child is behind, leading us to have to figure it out on our own or pay a tutor.Someone shared an internal handbook that finally explained WHY they act like this...It's NOT a religious school but apparently the staff think it's "an educational and spiritual community". it had things in it like telling assistants to "NEVER discuss with anyone outside of the classroom what you observe there"... now I know why I could never get any real information about my child's day.I thought my kids were learning Montessori not stuff like "Who of us, knowing our lover had left hidden a hundred messages, would not search fervently for those messages and read their every word with bated breath? Who of us, having read these messages, would not respond in kind?"... this is about cleaning a classroom! And this: "How do I become enlightened? Wash the dishes, cook the food, sweep the floor, and dust the house. Go not to the master seeking answers; go to watch him tie his shoes." I'm sorry, WHAT? The things they DON'T tell us is mind-boggling.