My elder son has taken classes at The Open Classroom since its inception, a year later, his younger brother joined as well. Both of them enjoy the learning a great deal and they genuinely look forward to their weekly classes there.
Classes are fun and conducted in small groups so teachers are able to identify the individual student’s strength and weakness after only a few classes. The detailed evaluation by the teachers after each module is very thoughtful and helpful to me. This personalized experience and tailored-training helped my kids grow their strength and overcome their weakness quite effectively.
The topical modules are designed to broaden the perspective of the kids, expose them to choices they wouldn’t know otherwise in school and prepare them to be well-informed and more open-minded. My sons learned a lot from modules such as “Meet the Architect” and “Meet the Restaurant Owner”. Growing up in a highly homogeneous society like HK, our kids are fortunate to have “The Open Classroom” classes as an essential learning tool which is supplement to school classes.
Although my son finds the course challenging, he loves the discussion topics and the fun atmosphere he shares with his classmates and teacher. The curriculum is well planned out with a wide range of interesting topics that are thoughtfully supplemented with constructive brainstorming, structured discussions, educational field trips and fun guest speakers. I'm encouraged with the amount of factual information he retains and the overall understanding he gains on the subjects. Furthermore, a disciplined approach in tackling different topics and putting thoughts on paper, has helped my son feel less intimidated and overwhelmed with writing. I see promising improvement in the way he approaches a topic, structures his ideas logically and communicates them through his writing. I genuinely appreciate the thoughtful progress updates on Lucas' development, which allow me to stay informed and work with him on his development needs in parallel with the class."
Prior to my time with Agnes & her team, I was completely lost. While I had my topic for my personal statement in mind, my essay lacked depth and was simply all over the place. Agnes helped me with my essay on content revisions and then paired me with a mentor who attends Columbia University, the school I plan to apply Early Decision for…They were there every step of the way and helped me reconfigure my thoughts in a way that would convey them more concisely. By the end of our fourth session my personal statement was complete. My personal statement was truly the one piece of my application that tied my entire story and profile together. Without this strong part of my application I believe that I would not have been admitted to the school of my dreams.
My daughter has always been a bookworm. However, her writing skills were not improving from reading books because her reading habit was to simply scan through a book to find out the ending of the story. After joining The Open Classroom programs, she was taught to take time to analyze the characters and content of different stories. Then I noticed that she started to read books in a different manner. Her reading habits have changed and her writing skills are improving. She has less grammatical mistakes in her written work. I am impressed that her writing speed has improved significantly under the teacher's guidance. I hope she can gain more from this program in the future.
As a teacher, I definitely see the need to promote critical thinking skills in our youths today. And life skills include so much more than what is included in the basic school subjects! From my daughter's reactions to the modules she took, I can see her interest brimming over after each class.