Open house season: showing a working classroom

Schedule tours during the work cycle, after the first hour. By then the children have arrived, settled and chosen work, and most of them are concentrating on work. A visiting parent who walks in at 9:45 on a Tuesday sees a four-year-old carrying a tray of water across the room without spilling, two six-year-olds working through a long addition problem with the golden beads, and a guide giving a lesson to one child at a low table.

Plan two kinds of visit. Daytime tours let families see children at work. An evening or weekend open house gives working parents a time they can come, and lets you answer questions out loud without whispering. They need different preparation.

Set the rules for daytime tours

Decide the limits before the first family books, and write them into the confirmation message:

• Group size. 2 or 3 adults at a time. More than that and the children start watching the visitors.
• Days and times. Pick 2 or 3 mornings a week, at the same time each day. Leave Monday mornings alone, and skip any week with a new child starting.
• Length. About 20 minutes of observing, followed by 10 to 15 minutes of questions somewhere else.
• No young siblings in the classroom. Offer a time when both parents can come, or a staff member who can sit with a toddler in the office.
• No photos. Say this in writing ahead of time, and again at the door.

Send families a short note before the visit:

When you arrive, a staff member will walk you to two chairs at the side of the classroom. Please stay seated and watch. The children are used to visitors and will mostly ignore you, which is what we want. If a child comes to talk to you, it's fine to say hello and answer quietly. Save your questions for afterwards. We'll have time to talk in the library.

Prepare the room and the children

Put 2 or 3 adult chairs against a wall where visitors can see most of the room without blocking a shelf or a walkway. Leave them there all season, so the children stop noticing them.

Give the children a grace and courtesy lesson on visitors early in the fall. Act it out with an adult playing the visitor:

• A visitor is here to watch. You can keep working.
• If you want to show a visitor your work, you can say "Would you like to see my work?" and bring it close.
• If a visitor asks you a question, you can answer, then go back to your work.

Decide who will meet each family at the door: an assistant, the director or the office manager. That person walks families in, sits with them for a moment, and walks them out. The guide keeps teaching.

Plan the open house evening

An evening or weekend open house with no children present needs something else to look at. Set the room up as if a work cycle has just paused:

• Lay out several works on rugs and tables, partly finished, with a small card next to each: what it is, the age a child might first use it, and what the child learns from it.
• Pick one material from each area: practical life, sensorial, language, mathematics and cultural.
• Ask the guide to give one short lesson to an adult volunteer every 20 minutes, for example the pink tower or the sandpaper letters, while visitors watch.
• Put out a printed daily schedule so families can see how the morning is arranged.

Have one staff member at the entrance with a sign-in sheet and the application information. Keep other staff in the classroom, ready to answer questions about the materials.

Answer the questions families ask

Families on a tour tend to ask the same questions. Write short, honest answers and give them to everyone who might be asked: the guide, the assistant, the director and the front office.

The usual ones:

• "How do you know what my child is learning if there are no tests?"
• "What happens if my child only wants to do one kind of work?"
• "Why are the ages mixed?"
• "What training do your guides have?"
• "What does a typical day look like, from drop-off to pickup?"
• "How much is tuition, and what does it include?"
• "When will we know if we have a place?"

Answer with the classroom they just saw when you can. "You saw the girl at the long table with the beads. She's five and in her third year. She was given that lesson a few weeks ago and has chosen it every day since."

Before families leave, hand them one page with the application deadline, the visit or interview step, the date you'll make decisions and a contact for questions. Write down each family's name and the questions they asked. Use that list to plan next year's tours and to decide which answers go on the school's website.