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The Perfect Match
By Lisa Busby, High School Counselor
One of my favorite moments of each September is when I hear the quiet shuffle of tiny feet outside my office, indicating that someone has stopped to examine the 8th grade Coat of Arms projects hanging on the walls. Shuffle shuffle stop. Shuffle stop, shuffle stop. I often poke my head outside the door and explain to the small observers that they are looking at pictures the 8th graders drew of their pasts, presents, and futures. “How did my buddy know what to put in the future?” kindergartners often ask as they gaze at bright images of mountains and mighty oak trees.
The Coat of Arms project marks the beginning of an important process of self-discovery, the high school application process. This rite of passage asks 8th graders to reflect on their lives, clarify their interests, articulate their successes, and visualize their futures. As they move through their educations and careers, they will confront versions of this process again and again until it is as familiar as Friday assemblies at SFDS. The adage “high school is a match to be made, not a prize to be won” is a touchstone for our students throughout their search for a high school. Just as there is no perfect career, there is also no perfect school. Rather, the goal is for each student to find a small handful of schools that are the right fit for him or her.
The summer before 8th grade, students and parents meet with me to discuss their expectations and needs for the high school application process. When the school year begins, I help students establish the criteria for their high school search. Soon after, they schedule shadow visits to witness “days in the life” of selected schools. In October, students narrow their choices to a handful of schools they would be happy to attend and begin filling out applications and preparing for interviews. I am pleased to report that each 8th grader worked hard all year to keep an open mind and find the high schools where he or she will have the support needed to climb that mountain and flourish like that tree imagined on the Coat of Arms projects last September.
Members of the class of 2008 applied to the following Bay Area high schools: Bay, Branson, Convent, Drew, Gateway, International, Jewish Community High School, Lick, Lowell, Marin Academy, Sacred Heart Cathedral, SI, SOTA, Stuart Hall, UHS, Urban, and Waldorf. The students who included boarding schools in their search applied to Andover, Brooks, Deerfield, Exeter, Middlesex, Taft, Thacher, and Williston Northampton.
For more insight into the high school application process, listen to "High School is Destiny," Lisa Busby's contribution to the radio program Perspectives which aired on NPR from last March.
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