Middle school experience at The Academy in Alameda?

HI there  -

My daughter is currently enrolled at an OUSD middle school and we are not happy with the culture that is failing to have expectations for learning - she has yet to have a math teacher and we are a month and a half into the year. We are exploring as many other options right now as we can - private, charter, alternative.

If anyone has experience with Alameda Community Learning Center or the the Academy of Alameda I would love any insight into your thoughts.

Our daughter is arts-minded, having gone to elementary school at Walden Community Center and School and is not used to self-directed academic attention. She is highly social and very adept at weaving seamlessly into a community. I am hoping that the culture of any school we are looking at will have a baseline of learning expectations and inspire a sense of curiosity and interest. I am hoping for her to find a great social group who are motivated to be successful and love learning.

Any help is greatly appreciated!

Darci

Parent Replies

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Our firstborn went to ACLC for 6th-8th grades, and our younger kid is now at Academy of Alameda (started in 6th, now in 8th). Both schools did a good job of welcoming new students. ACLC's project-based learning worked well our for our daughter, from competing in annual science fair to working on projects in and out of class. They encourage & support student ("learner") initiatives. She really connected with several of her teachers ("facilitators"). In hindsight she says she didn't like her middle school, but at the time I think she did.

At AoA it has been a challenge because of the pandemic and the school's/community's ability to adapt last year (we're back in person now - and it's going much better). The academics have not been as strong as we had hoped, but that was greatly impacted by the pandemic/distance learning. As a bigger school, AoA has a wide range of backgrounds and baseline knowledge of incoming 6th graders, so I think it's harder to reach all students at their current academic level (e.g., kids who pick up concepts quickly or already knew the concept are bored). Our AoA/second kid also is less interested in school than our ACLC/first kid was at the same age, so this is exasperated by lack of motivation/interest. Happy to chat more if you have specific questions.