I didn't intend to leave such a long gap from my last post in August. Since we returned from Dallas, thinks started happening and the momentum to post anything was lost.
Jerry on a school outing (above left) and Aaron goes to school with a schoolbag that's bigger than him (above right)!
School began on 1 Sept for both Jerry and Aaron. Jerry is in K3, his final year in kindergarten. Aaron is just beginning in nursery. Aaron's first week of school was posted on FB; to summarise: he had a little separation anxiety leaving home at first and was also upset when he had to leave school. However, after almost 3 months, he has adjusted well and loves going back.
It has always been observed that Aaron responds more to English, since he was under 2 yrs old. One time, when an aunt called to him by his Chinese name, he did not respond; then she switched to say "Hello!" he said it right back. Now, although he goes to a local Chinese school which only has 20 mins English "lesson" per day, he still responds better in English. In contrast, Jerry has always preferred Cantonese, sometimes even Mandarin, to English.
It is fascinating that whilst both boys are placed in the same environment and are offered similar experiences, they respond very differently. It relates to how they are very different in character and style. It's really fun to watch them grow up together and turn out so differently.
September 2009 also was a month of activity in securing a primary one spot for Jerry. The way the primary one placement is designed in HK is complicated and almost incomprehensible. Basically, there are public schools and private schools (this category actually loosely encompasses 3 categories, but for easy reading, I'll just group them together). Public schools don't have a choice in their students, however, their primary 1 places are split up to go through 2 stages of admission. Stage 1 allows cross-district applications; i.e. you can apply to a school that's not in your school district. The applicants in this stage are split into 2 groups: 1. children with connections (i.e. older siblings in the school, parent teaches at the school, etc); and 2. children with no connections. The school has to admit all applicants in group 1 and if there are more kids than places, then the extra kids take up the places allocated to group 2. All the places left are allocated to group 2 applicants by "lucky draw". Stage 2 is when you have to list in order of preference the schools in your own school district. But it is all "lucky draw" at this stage and there is no guarantee at all as to which school one ends up with.
Having just written the above, I don't even know if I understand.
Private schools, on the other hand, can choose their students and some schools are highly sought-after, either because they are traditionally known as good schools or they have proven academic track-records. Since the public school route is really uncertain, we also took matters into our own hands and selected a few private schools for Jerry so that we have some control over where he'll end up going to school for the next 6 years. Another reason to pick a primary school is that some of them have connected high schools, which means that we will not have to go through another school searching exercise in 6 years time.
In Hong Kong, we observe that many parents take the whole school searching exercise a little too seriously. Not only for primary schools, but already at the kindergarten stage. Kelvin and I took a minimalist approach and did not create "portfolios", nor did we go in person to pick up application forms that were available for download (those are the sort of things that most parents do). We have also heard of kids who had to attend "interview training" for a whole year (2 of my ex-colleagues put their kids through this). Some people also went to extremes and paid 4 figure sums to have their portfolios created for them.
Anyway, to prove that all that crap is not necessary, we deliberately did none of it. Our applications to the 5 schools of choice contained: 1 cover letter, the application form, a one page profile in table format, and a recommendation letter from Jerry's headmistress (which is issued to all the kids on request) only. In the end, Jerry received 2 offers and one waiting list position. All in all, the lesson to be learned is that the whole recruitment process is not as complicated and does not need to be as big a deal as many people make it out to be.
The best thing for us is that Jerry actually got into the school that is our first choice, St. Stephen's College Preparatory School. Not only is the campus next to a beach, it also has a boarding program in 6th grade. Jerry also likes it because he watched a cartoon during the "interview"; therefore, he reckons he will get to watch cartoon when he attends this school. Jerry was not stressed about any of the interviews because we did not make a fuss over the whole thing. As mentioned on FB, he applied the whole process to Nemo of "Finding Nemo" and wondered why he didn't have to go to an interview. He had been re-watching the film and it prompted this question. Kids are so good at applying things observed; hopefully he can continue this attitude throughout his studies.
At one of Jerry's school friend's birthday party over the weekend, Kelvin took some time to chat with the other parents (that's his role, social-king). One thing that got me having a deep thought was that some of the parents, when they considered a school, they also had to consider the cost. It occurred to me then that we are truly lucky and blessed. My sons are amongst the luckiest and more privileged children who can go to whichever school might seem suitable or desirable, without any consideration as to money. Not to say that we are rolling in it, but, at least we don't have to cringe at the idea of going to a private school. Tuition for a year equals that of a local Hong Kong college student's tuition for a year. During the application process, we did make loose calculations of how much it would cost for 6 years total, but the actual amount was not in issue. It only struck me now, that whilst we talked about which school we thought would be "best" for Jerry, we never had to worry about whether that school was expensive. With this in mind, I hope to remind myself and my family not to take things for granted and to be grateful every day for what we have.
Our babies are growing up and I hope that Kelvin and I can really guide them in the right direction to become responsible and contributing members of society.
