Lycee Francais la Perouse - Corte Madera Campus

Unfortunately our family suffered two years of the preschool program at the Lycee Francais La Perouse. We tolerated it because our son is half french and we thought we were fortunate to have a scholarship from the French government to help with the costs of the tuition.

The class size for preschool is large ( 20), the age range of the students is too wide, and the teachers are ill equipped to handle boys who can be more physical and demanding. Further, it is a French immersion program but  many of the children are learning French for the first time, and some children are not very verbal in their native language yet either!  So the students receptive and expressive language skills vary dramatically, causing them to interact with each other more physically than average toddlers, and creating boredom for the kids like mine who is  very verbal and already bilingual. Rather than helping the teachers with extra staffing, or helping them find ways to accommodate the unique needs of the individual students, the administration makes them play with the cards they were dealt and tells the parents to seek outside help a their own expense to make their kids fit in.  I would prefer a school that believes in and practices tolerance, acceptance and inclusion and accommodates different learning styles.

Compared to other schools I have visited, this is a strict and joyless environment for kids. They operate in a very old fashioned, close minded way. At "recreation time" the teachers sit on the sides, drinking coffee and yelling at the kids, and putting them in "time out" , rather than playing with them or teaching them how to play together. They are completely opposed to any exceptions to their antiquated rules and have no concept of individualizing their instructional support.

Now that our child is attending public school, our eyes have been opened to the real world where teachers laugh and are warm and friendly and it breaks our hearts to realize how oppressive the lycee was for our son. He is thriving in public school and his teacher loves him.