GUEST POST: Parent's Perspective on Choosing Via Vita Academy

​By the time anyone else reads this, I will have deleted and rewritten it 100 times.  

I could talk your ear off about this, but ask me to write it down and I feel like I’m standing in front of the class without my homework completed. 

I will sum it up the best I can.   Here we go.  

Olivia is our daughter and our only child.  I’m not biased (well a little maybe) but I can say that she’s pretty wonderful – she’s smart and funny and can charm practically anyone, not saying that she doesn’t frost my hair for free, but for the most part an awesome kid. 

She loves school and her friends. So, when we started noticing that she wasn’t loving school as much as she did, and we kept hearing the same story about the same kid doing and saying the same horrid things, we took notice.   

I won’t get into the all the details but we knew it was time for a change. We wanted her to have an awesome education and an awesome experience in school, so we started talking to our friends and family about private schools – this made my father exceptionally happy as he wanted her in private school from day one.  

I looked at a lot of schools – probably every one in Metro, in fact, and then I heard about Via Vita from a good friend.  I started checking it out on their website.  I loved what I saw – I saw what I wanted for my daughter.  A school that celebrates individuals and brings each child’s talents into the classroom – awesome!  Life skill education – right on!  Arts and Physical education daily – bring it on baby!  Wait….. what is this inquiry based themed learning thing they mention…..hold on….let me read that part again….oh okay….PERFECT!   SIGN ME UP!  The entire mission statement, philosophy and core values are what education should be – it’s what every child should be exposed to.  

What we want for our daughter is the opportunity to thrive in her school environment and be challenged as she learns. We believe she will have this here.  We believe she will gain confidence in this environment.  

We are excited for this change but we are also nervous  - are we making the right decision, are we pulling her away from her friends – is that going to cause problems, what if she has a hard time making new friends?  Every parent probably has those concerns when making a change.  We believe it is a change for the best and is what’s best for Olivia.

​I think she is going to be just fine – in fact – she is already telling me that she is going to be a better cook than I am and can’t wait to use the stove!  ​