More about Dimensions Academy

We've raved a couple times about the school experience that Elizabeth has received here in Bloomington and ranted (more privately) about the poor experience we had in Minneapolis public schools.

Minnesota Monthly magazine caught on to all the fuss about what's going on here in education in Minnesota, and specifically in Bloomington, writing about Dimensions Academy, the gifted program Elizabeth spent her past year in in sixth grade, and Elements, which Robert will be joining next year as a third-grader. Many people commute their kids from our former Southwest Minneapolis neighborhood to take advantage of the program, and in fact, Robert has a friend with an older sibling who gets driven in from Prior Lake to attend Bloomington schools for the DA program. Even not in the Elements program this past year, Robert received just a fantastic education from his second-grade teacher, Mrs. Evans.

I shudder to think of where we might be living and where the kids would be attending school if the gifted and talented coordinator at our Minneapolis school hadn't told us, off the record, about Dimensions Academy.

I recommend reading the article.

Robert's journey continues

I really should let Cate write this blog post, since she has worked very hard on this all year, but we only have a few minutes to blog today, so I'm here to report that Robert got into the Elements program for the Bloomington schools for next year.

After a disastrous first-grade year, we weren't sure if Robert was going to realize his potential, but he's really blossomed at Ridgeview and with Mrs. Evans as his teacher.

Elements is the relatively new second- and third-grade version of the Dimensions Academy (gifted and talented) program that Elizabeth is in. Cate has been painstakingly collecting Robert's work and tidbits for this program ever since we found out we couldn't apply for the program last year. (We didn't have the test scores and Minneapolis Public Schools was extremely unhelpful. We were glad to commit to leaving MPS for Bloomington even though we didn't have a house here at the time.)

We are so psyched. He is going to do great.