Private School Review Blog

Is Your Job Search Stuck in the Past? Here’s How to Fix It

It’s late fall, early winter. The air is crisp, the holidays are approaching, and suddenly, it hits you.

The promotion you’ve been counting on? Not happening. Your colleague is getting the nod, and you're left wondering why. After playing out the scenarios in your head, it’s clear: it’s time for something new. A fresh start, new challenges, a change of scenery, just what you need, right?

Absolutely. But now comes the big question: How do you make it happen?

You start by facing a hard truth: your resume is outdated. You haven’t touched it in years, and as you scroll through the document, you realize: your job search approach is so… 2020.

Microsoft Copilot generated this image.

Sound familiar? Don’t panic. The job market has evolved, and so should your strategy. Here’s how to modernize your approach and stand out in today’s competitive landscape.

Get Involved. Stay Involved. Expand Your Reach.

By now, you’ve been at St. Swithin’s for five years. You know the school, the students, the routine. But let’s talk about something bigger, your presence beyond the classroom.

Sure, involvement at school is a given, it’s expected, maybe even required. But what about the world outside those walls?

• Have you joined a local service club or choral society to connect with people?
• Have you attended workshops from your state’s independent school association,

Does a dead language have any place in a 21st-century curriculum? Is it useful? Is it relevant? Does it have value as an enrichment to the core curriculum? I think it does, and for the following reasons.

1. Latin offers young people a glimpse into the life and times of the ancient Romans.

Yes, they can read about ancient Rome and watch videos. They can learn about the expansion of the Roman Empire under Julius Caesar. All that information is readily available. But it is filtered information. The whole point of learning a language is to be able to read source materials. I don't want somebody telling me what Julius Caesar said. I want to read it for myself. I want to understand what Caesar said, why he said it, how he said it - the works.

With that assumption in mind, it makes sense to allow students to experience the language by learning how to speak it. Perhaps Latin may be a dead language because it is no longer the lingua franca of commerce and world affairs. On the other hand, Latin is a beautiful-sounding language that will delight young listeners.

I will disclaim that I learned Latin back in the 50s and 60s when it was taught in the rather old-fashioned way languages were taught back then. You learned endless conjugations and declensions. You struggled with Latin's nuanced sense of tense. Et cetera. It would have been rather dry and dull had it not been for

This article has been updated to reflect 2026 data and recent developments.

Are you thinking about sending your child off to private school? Then, you must decide which educational philosophy and approach work best for you. What it comes down to is whether you want to send your child to a school that uses a traditional approach to teaching or one that uses a non-traditional approach.

In the public school world, a traditional school is a regular public school, and a non-traditional school is a charter school. That's not what I am discussing here concerning private schools. The concept of a private school as a mainly independent, self-financing corporate entity does not change. You and I will focus on what is taught in the classroom and how it is prepared.

The early years

Your child's age is a significant factor in choosing an educational approach. For example, if you send him to a Montessori school as a toddler, you expose him to a non-traditional approach to education. It is an excellent approach and is highly regarded. But non-traditional nonetheless. Start your child off in a Montessori, Waldorf, or Reggio Emilia school, and you will lay a solid foundation for learning in later life. But visit a traditional private primary school, and you will see a quite different approach to early education. Private School Review's 5 Facts about Montessori, Waldorf & Reggio Emilia Schools offers more information about these educational approaches.

The apparent difference will be the

Perhaps you are just starting to think about private high school for your middle schooler. Or maybe you have started the process of choosing the right private school and had some questions about how to proceed. These five 'must haves' will hopefully help you focus on the things which are truly important when it comes to choosing a private school.

1. The best fit

Always number one on my list is the fit. Fit trumps everything else simply because the fit is all about how your child and the school mesh. If the fit and the school are not in synch, your child will be unhappy. Keep this in mind as you visit schools on your short list. Your child will know instinctively whether or not she likes the school.

Now, having pointed out how important fit is, it makes good sense to organize the visits so that she likes all the schools on your short list. How do you do that? The most efficient way is to hire an educational consultant who will identify schools which will be a good fit. That is what an educational consultant does. Consultants take the time to get to know you and your child. They know their schools too. Accordingly, the list of schools which a consultant presents you will be on target. Any or all of the schools will potentially be a good fit. One will be the best fit. Visiting schools on a list of schools carefully selected with

You've seen the articles in major publications such as Forbes and Chicago Magazine. "Top 10 Prep Schools" or "Best Private Schools in ____" These lists invariably contain the names of schools that are familiar. But are these schools the right ones for you? Let me explain why I believe that ranking private schools makes no sense for parents like us who are looking for the right school for our children.

A flawed premise

Ranking private schools is intrinsically flawed from the get-go. Why? Because each private school is a unique entity. The essence of being a private school is that it does its own thing. It accepts the students it wants to accept. It teaches the curriculum it wants to teach. It teaches that curriculum the way it wants to teach. Each private school has its own mission statement, philosophy, code of conduct, programs, and traditions. So how is it possible to compare apples to oranges? That is essentially what ranking private schools attempts to do.

For example, look at all the features of Shattuck-St. Mary's. Maybe another school has some of the same features. Maybe it doesn't. It is up to you to determine what you expect from a private school.

Yes, you can compare things like the number of AP courses, varsity sports, extracurricular activities, and so on. But you normally will make those comparisons when you