August 2007
Education abroad is a complex topic and probably one of the greatest concerns for parents dragging their kids halfway around the world.  Getting advance information about schools in the place you’ll be heading is often difficult if you can’t visit beforehand, which is usually the case if you’re on a limited budget.  Moreover, schools offer your family some of the best and most natural opportunities to meet neighbors, make new friends, and bridge the language and culture gap abroad. 

Keep in mind that attending school abroad is a very different experience from attending at home.  Living abroad is an enormous learning experience in itself and the most “educational” aspect of attending school in another country is being in another country.  That goes double if you’re planning to do it all in another language.  For all those reasons, finding the best school in a particular city is a lot less important than finding the right school given your family’s particular set of circumstances.

What is the right school?
Finding the right school for your child abroad depends largely on three things: your child’s individual learning style, your academic goals for your child, and the academic options available to you in your destination.  In a non-English speaking country, you and your children will also face a specific set of challenges related to immersion vs. bilingual education.  This is an area where unrealistic expectations are very common and I’ve met many families who naively (although with the best of intentions) committed their children to one or the other with unfortunate results.  Yes, children are more receptive to acquiring a foreign language.  And given the right environment they’ll learn it much faster than you (and torture you with their superior skills).  But it’s still a difficult process and sink or swim doesn’t work for everyone.  Even if your children will be attending school primarily in an English language environment, you’ll undoubtedly encounter a variety of educational options as well as cultural, social and educational challenges.  If the culture is unfamiliar and your child’s school day is conducted in a language other than English, those options and challenges will expand even more dramatically.

No matter where you’re headed, rest assured that going to school abroad will be a very different experience than going to school back home.  Oftentimes, you’ll end up cobbling two or more schooling options together to come up with something that works for your family and your kids.  Don’t be surprised if you finally hit upon something that works only after trying one or two things that don’t. The more relaxed and flexible you and your children can be on the front end regarding academics, the better overall academic experience your family will have during your time away.  It’s helpful to think of your search for schools abroad as an exploration as opposed to finding the right fit immediately.  There’s necessarily a lot of give and take between schools and visiting families.  It will be much more pleasant for everyone if you can resist the urge to control every aspect of the experience at the beginning. 

Decide on Your Academic Goals for Each Child
It’s important to consider the relative importance of various academic goals for your children.  Is fluency in another language a top priority?  Do your kids need to keep up with their studies at home?  Are there specific subjects or topic areas you want to them to concentrate on?  Is socialization with the local population a priority or is meeting other kids from around the world more important?  What about their English studies?  Will you bring work from back home and complete it alongside the homework from their new schools each day?  What about tutors?  Do you need language tutors for your kids on a daily basis?  How will your kids complete their homework in an unfamiliar language?  Many schools abroad are run by religious organizations.  Do you have a religious or pedagogical preference?

Immersion vs. Bilingual Education
Generally speaking, the biggest decision you’ll face regarding schooling abroad in a country where English is not the native tongue is whether to go the full immersion route and put your kids in private or public schools taught completely in another language, or whether a bilingual approach might be more appropriate, where a portion of each day is taught in another language and a portion is taught in English.  In some cities there will also be private “American” schools available where classes are taught in English with the option of taking classes in the local language.  Home schooling is certainly another option, one that requires considerable commitment from a parent or hired tutor.  Of course, this approach also rather drastically limits your family’s exposure to the local culture.  You may also find a variety of language classes, private tutors, and tiny private schools willing to educate your children anyway you see fit.  Often, there are so many choices it’s hard to know where to begin. 

Taking the Immersion Route
If you want your kids to achieve fluency in another language, the immersion route is a good way to go.  But, and this is a big but, immersion commonly backfires for two reasons.  First, the kids are ill-prepared for the experience and second, they don’t spend enough time in the school to actually move beyond an initial transition period to actual language learning.  The immersion experience that many families are seeking can be spectacularly unsuccessful if not approached with a great deal of flexibility and an appreciation for how difficult it is to learn a second language and to adjust to a new culture.  We saw a number of families come and go during our 18 months in Mexico, and some who had enrolled their children in Mexican schools ended up having very bad experiences.  If the reason you are choosing an immersion experience for your children is to help them achieve fluency in another language, I urge you not to do it unless your kids are going to stay in the school for a period of six months or longer.  Even six months is really too short a period of time and your kids will most likely only be just starting to learn the language at that
point.  A year is much better and two is probably perfect to really have your children reach any sort of true fluency. 

Why You Need Six Months Plus
During the first two months of an immersion experience your children will learn a great deal about school uniforms and schoolbooks.  They’ll become experts in the myriad requirements regarding book covers, page designations, pen and pencil colors and acceptable styles of handwriting.  The entire family will become familiar with the multitude of rules and regulations that foreign schools have around parental involvement (parents are typically NOT welcome in or even near the classroom in many schools abroad), holidays, gym days, lunch behavior, classroom comportment, and the rigorous and sometimes confusing (and archaic) homework demands.

Your kids will meet all their new teachers and classmates and go through a period of suspicion, possibly a bit of taunting or teasing, and finally some level of acceptance which can often lead to downright friendship if you’re there long enough.  Actual language learning takes a backseat initially while so much of everything else takes precedence.  Eventually, by month three or four, when you’ve finally got the hang of things, you and your kids start realizing that by golly they’re actually starting to speak the language.  Hooray!  Now if they’ve only got another month or so to go before it’s time to return home or move somewhere else, you can see how discouraging the whole experience might feel.

Some Big Pluses of Immersion Schools
Despite the difficulties of the immersion experience, it is certainly one of the best ways for your children to become fluent in another language as well as to experience the richness and complexity of another culture.  If they stick it out, they will ultimately be welcomed into a foreign school community and allowed to cross cultural boundaries that outsiders simply aren’t.  They will make potentially lifelong friendships with their classmates and teachers.  And they will learn more about themselves and their strengths than they ever imagined possible.

How to Help the Immersion Experience Go Smoothly 
If you decide that your children and your family are willing to commit the time and energy necessary to making the immersion education experience a successful one, there are certainly things you can do to help your kids over some of the rough spots early on.  Try to expose your kids to the language and culture of the country you’ll be visiting before you leave.  Language classes, tutors, camps, CD-roms, bilingual books, movies, restaurants…whatever you can find to give your kids some idea of where they’re headed and what they might encounter will help a lot.  Even a few months of after-school or weekend language classes can give kids a few phrases to begin with and perhaps more importantly, start to develop their ear for the language they’ll be hearing all around them in the months to come.  If you can afford it, consider moving to your destination abroad a month or so before the school year begins to acclimate your kids to their new home and to find a private tutor or to enroll them in language classes.  Another thing that’s very important to your child’s success is a commitment on the part of the entire family to learning the
language.  Not that everyone needs to achieve fluency, but it’s extremely helpful if every member of the family is engaged in language learning at some basic level.  Often, the success or failure of an immersion language experience simply comes down to one thing: practice.

Timing and Tutoring Can Make All the Difference
Language tutors can make the difference between fluency and failure.  Tutors can help you and your children not only learn a new language and work through their homework assignments, they can also help you navigate the potentially rocky terrain of a new school culture.  Your child may come home from school the first day and tell you that she needs to wrap each of her 15 notebooks in a certain colored paper and then in a specific kind of plastic.  Your child cannot remember the exact color of the paper nor recall the word for plastic in the native language and you, of course, have no idea where to buy either but…it’s all got to be done by tomorrow.  Your child is already frantic because he or she is the only one in the class who doesn’t have this done yet and it must be done because she doesn’t want to feel any more like an outsider than she already does.  Who can you ask about this?  Your tutor.  And how about that school uniform?  Why does your child need a certain uniform for Monday that’s different than the uniform for the rest of the week?  And why is there yet another uniform for sports day?  And why does the capital letter of each sentence have to be written in red pen?  And what’s that thing that your child has to write across each piece of paper before they even start the homework?  Don’t go nuts.  Ask your tutor.  And ask her where to buy school supplies.  And clean meat.  And where does she or he get the laundry done?  And how do you take the bus to….?  A language tutor can become an invaluable ally for your family, a friend to your kids and someone who eventually invites you into their own lives as well.  Our daughter’s tutor, Miss Paula, became an important person in all of our lives and enriched our family’s sabbatical experience enormously.

Finding Tutors and Language Classes For Your Children
You can find language tutors abroad by word of mouth, looking at ads in newspapers, on bulletin boards around town, at the local high schools and universities, and through teachers at your child’s school.  Ask other ex-pat families for suggestions and check the Internet as well.  Don’t be afraid to try different tutors, different hours, and different approaches.  Not every tutor is a good teacher and certain tutors will have personalities and styles that mesh better with those of your children.  Language classes and camps both here and abroad can be located in a similar fashion.  Depending on your children’s ages and learning styles, a mixture of language classes back home or abroad before school starts, and then one-on-one tutoring once school begins can help keep your child’s interest and confidence level high.

Be Honest With Your Kids About the Challenges 
Don’t sugarcoat the immersion experience when you discuss it with your kids.  Let them know that it will be tough going at the beginning.  Have clear-cut non-academic goals for them to achieve initially.  Make one new friend in their class.  Learn the names of two people who sit nearby.  Find out if the school has a soccer or volleyball team they can join.  Make sure your kids understand that you will be there to help them any way you can and that you have confidence in their abilities to meet the challenges they’re inevitably going to encounter. 

Do Your Research Ahead of Time
A little front end research into your child’s school options and the reality of the school day in your intended sabbatical destination can go a long way to preparing your entire family for the challenges ahead.  Early preparation can cut down on stress levels and keep everyone on a more even keel.

Be Sensitive To What Your Child is Going Through
Expect that initially, immersion learning will be difficult for your child and he or she may feel afraid, grumpy or out of sorts.  Be patient and empathetic.  Celebrate the tiny successes  You learned the name of a classmate?  Hurray!  You understood the homework assignment?  Fantastic!  What they are doing is hard and it will take time for them to feel OK.  Try to offer help wherever you can but don’t push too hard.  Your child may already feel like a square peg in a round hole.  Being pushy and intrusive with their teacher or with school officials (who may not speak any English either) will only make them feel more uncomfortable.  Ask gently what you can do to help.  You may be surprised at what sorts of creative options are possible. 

If It Doesn’t Feel Right, Try Something Different
Above all, it’s important to remain flexible.  Try to keep in mind that the immersion experience may not work for your child at a particular moment in time or at a particular school.  Decide as a family how much time everyone is willing to commit to a specific school experience.  If it doesn’t appear to be working out, try something else. 

The Bottom Line Regarding Immersion Learning

*Prepare your children with early and ongoing tutoring in their new language.

*Give your kids enough time to achieve fluency.  A year or more is best.  Six months is the absolute minimum.

*Be prepared for an initial transition period that can be frustrating for both kids and parents.

*Believe that it will get better.

*If your child remains consistently unhappy after several months, consider switching schools or trying something different.

Bilingual Schools
Bilingual schools are a good option if you want your kids to be exposed to a new language and culture and you aren’t going to be living in a particular city for longer than six months.  They can also be used as a springboard to an immersion experience if you are going to be in a city for longer than six months and your child has no previous exposure to the language.  Beginning in a bilingual school and then moving into an immersion situation can often be successful if you’re going to be somewhere long enough.  It can give your child the necessary foundation in a new language and the self-confidence necessary to make the immersion experience truly successful.  You can meet both foreign and native kids and parents and give yourselves a good leg up in the area of socialization.

Bilingual schools in Europe, Mexico, and other parts of Central and South America tend to be private institutions, sometimes with religiously affiliations.  They are typically geared for teaching English to native kids.  The teachers might be native speakers with some English language ability or foreign-born ESL (English as a Second Language) teachers hired to teach English to local students

Typically, half the day is taught in English and the other half in the native language of the country.  In Mexico, we found that “English class” really comprised several subject areas that were taught in English and then math and science were taught in Spanish.  We found that the “English” being taught was one or two grade levels below those back home, but that the other subjects were either on par or more advanced than at a similar level back home, especially in the elementary grades.

Pros and Cons of Bilingual Schools Abroad 
A bilingual school can work well as a transition to an immersion experience on a variety of levels.  It can improve the child’s ear for learning a new language and can teach basic classroom language skills.  It can introduce cultural differences and help your child develop socialization skills gradually and all within the familiar framework of English.  By using tutors regularly your child’s language skills will improve after several months.  But it’s also important to keep in mind the limitations of a bilingual school.  Many parents of English-speaking children feel disappointed at the end of a bilingual school experience because they have failed to understand the primary goal of bilingual schools outside of the U.S.  Bilingual schools abroad are aimed at teaching English to speakers of another language.  They are not aimed at teaching another language to English-speakers. 

This is a critical difference and it’s why bilingual schools typically do not result in teaching English-speaking children fluency in another language.  If both English and another language is being spoken in your child’s classroom, which language do you think your child will choose to speak?  Whichever is easier.  If there are gringos and foreign language speakers (natives) in your child’s classroom, whom will your children gravitate towards on the playground?  Do you see where I’m heading? 

Who can blame kids for wanting to hang out with people who speak their language and share their customs and beliefs?  If this is fine with you and you don’t mind that your children will only slowly pick up phrases and words in another language, then this is a good option for your kids.  They’ll have fun meeting other kids from around the world, they’ll learn the basics in another language and will continue to keep pace academically (mas o menos) with their peers back home.

Home Schooling    
If you’re already home schooling your children you know vastly more than I do about this topic and I can only salute you for your commitment to your child’s education.  If you intend to continue home schooling your children abroad I do want to suggest that you be very thoughtful about the impact of that decision on your family’s overall experience.  As foreigners, you will most likely already feel a sense of isolation from the world around you.  And even more so than in the states (where there are usually places other than schools to meet families in your area) schools abroad are an invaluable way of meeting both local and ex-pat families; something that’s critical for experiencing the richness of the culture around you. 

Additional Schooling Options Abroad
Depending on your sabbatical destination, you may be surprised at what is or is not available in terms of educational opportunities for your kids.  In some places, public schools or private religious schools are the only options.  But in other locations, the choices can be as varied (and mind-boggling) as they are in the U.S. and may include American schools, Waldorf schools, Montessori programs, military academies, language schools, and many other options offering a variety of educational styles and philosophies.  Generally speaking, as with most things, you get what you pay for.  Don’t forget that the costs of private schools abroad are relative to the local economy.  Depending on where you go, private school tuition abroad may be significantly cheaper than a similar program back home.  The tuition costs will undoubtedly impact the make-up of the student body and whether (and which economic segment of) the local population will be represented.  Once again, it pays to do some preliminary research once you arrive in your destination abroad before committing your children to a specific school. 

Staying Flexible Is Key
There are pro and cons to every situation and depending on your children and your family’s educational goals, if you can remain flexible and open to the possibilities around you, you’ll undoubtedly find something eventually that fits the bill.  If this whole process feels a bit hit and miss, that’s because it is.  There are no right or wrong ways to do it.  All you can do is consider your child’s interest, motivation, and ability to learn another language, the length of your stay abroad, the various options available to you, and then pick something and go for it.  One of the best things about living abroad is that the whole experience is about education in one form or another.  A specific school or academic experience is just one out of the many learning experiences your child will have during his or her time abroad. 

So…if after trying a certain school or a specific tutor for a few months, your child’s interest or skill level changes or you discover a potentially better fit someplace else…make the change.  Staying flexible and keeping things in perspective will help you eventually find the school or educational situation that feels right for your child and your family.

The Fitness Starts @ Home Training Guide - We can all use more motivation.  That's especially true if we are starting an exercise program, or if we want to take it to the next level.  At last, all the motivation you need is right here, because right now you can access the secrets the fitness professionals have kept hidden for years! After helping thousands of individuals to achieve their deeply personal objectives through seminars, personal training, coaching, one-on-one and group sessions, boot camps and fitness classes, Sean Trask now makes them available to you in this powerful eBook.