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Parents' Corner:
By Joseph Moore, Parent
From the Winter 2001 Newsletter

As a parent, I used to deal with worry about letting down my kids by not trying to make them learn important stuff. My oldest two are 9 and 7, and it’s getting pretty ludicrous to worry any more they learn stuff that blows my mind without any arm-twisting.

The oldest learned to knit. We’re not talking scarves, we’re talking blankets with candle-tree patterns and cabling and all those other beautiful things I know nothing about. At school, everybody admires it and takes it for granted that a little boy might want to knit. This is nothing that would have occurred to me yet his powers of concentration and absorption of technical details (he reads those pattern books and knocks them off) are adult level in this case.

My seven year old does math problems in her head, just to do them. She doesn’t read fluently yet, but can tell what 17 times 20 equals just by thinking about it. And she’s usually so happy that it’s a total joy to be around her. So, except for increasingly rare and brief moments, I don’t worry any more.

Cautionary note: kids who start at DVS after having spent time in traditional schools need some time to adjust they get bored and such. The amount of time varies greatly. Kids whose first school is DVS tend to catch on pretty fast (seems almost instant, from this parent’s point of view).

Diablo Valley School admits students of any race, color, sex, sexual orientation, national or ethnic origin to all rights and privileges, programs and activities generally accorded or made available to students and staff at the school. It does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, sex, sexual orientation, national or ethnic origin in administration of its educational policies, admissions policies, scholarship and loan program, and athletic and other school administered programs.

Our school has enrolled students from: Antioch, Berkeley, Clayton, Concord, Danville, El Cerrito, Lafayette, Livermore, Martinez, Oakland, Oakley, Pittsburg, Pleasant Hill, San Francisco, San Leandro, Vallejo, Walnut Creek and other communities in the Bay Area.