Berkeley Arts Magnet at Whittier School

We had to withdraw our son from Berkeley Rose Waldorf, which is, as you can imagine, a heartbreaking experience for any parent and child. Our experience was atypical I think of BRW in that it was a negative experience, but for what it's worth our son is also atypical: he's truly bilingual but his Spanish is better than his English and he has typically Mexican features. Our son never "fit in" so it's hard to know where to begin. I love the Waldorf principles, but unfortunately for our family we got an unskilled teacher, and my criticism of BRW is that if we had not initiated an additional conference (beyond the standard midterm conference--which was positive), we never would have discovered that our son was being isolated because of his behavior. Our second criticism is What mechanisms are in place to help instructors who don't know what to do? Our son was being isolated every day. Can the instructor ask for help? The instructor told us "Your son needs to learn how to enter into play." But if your child is different, is it possible that the door to "enter into play" is locked--or at least difficult to open? What the instructor described to us was aggressive behavior we didn't see exhibited outside of his BRW class. But if a door is locked, what do yo do? Stand outside politely and wait--or if you're a 4-yr-old, do you start tackling people? I don't wish to air personal grievances here. We couldn't find a home for our son at BRW. My wife had even been volunteering there (she is in Waldorf training), and I am a teacher myself. We would have loved to have found a home in BRW--a school that ostensibly values inclusion and diversity--and in which our son would have been welcomed. I like the community at BRW--the other parents were wonderful in our limited interactions--and I appreciated the administration when, for our son's emotional well-being (our fear of him being stigmaticized), we had to withdraw him. My criticism of BRW is that the Waldorf training should not stand in as a panacea for common sense commitment to inclusion and diversity. Our older daughter went to a local co-op and what happened to our son would have never happened there because there was a genuine commitment to each child as an individual.

Our kid has been going to Shu Ren for a few years and she loves it. The teachers are caring, the kids are great, and our daughter comes home every day with a big smile on her face. Plus it's cool to see that she now able to understand and speak Mandarin.