a school by any other name...

When I entered college as a freshman years ago (I'll decline to say how many for now...feeling a wee bit too old), I had the extremely naiive idea that everyone came from a public high school like I did. I never knew anyone who went to a private school, or boarding school, or an international school, and I didn't know homeschooling even existed before my son was a year old. But Dartmouth attracts many of the private school-types, and my freshman year facebook was filled with wide-eyed preppy optimism. It was also filled with a fascinating array of schools from all over the world, and I was intrigued by many of their names. So-and-So High School or Such-and-Such Senior High just weren't the norm. Sure, there were a few "institutes" and tons of "academies"--This-and-That Academy and Thus-and-So Academy. The most populous were Phillips Exeter and Phillips Andover Academies.

There were several others too, and the names that I thought were the coolest were the "day schools" or "country day schools." Now, I see these kinds of schools everywhere today, but back then, they were new to me in my limited experience. This-That-and-the-Other Country Day School just sounded like the place to be. What kinds of things did kids learn at the Blah-Blah-Blah-Etcetera International Day School? Those schools sounded super-hip and super-important, and it's those ever-so-stylish names that inspired the names of our homeschool. I say 'names' because the name has changed each time we have moved.

Our school's name the first two years was the Summercourt Day School. Then it changed to the Audubon Country Day School (we were living in a more rural area at the time, thus the addition of "country"). This year our school is called the Willow Creek Classical Day School. How cool is that?

We're super-hip and super-important.