New School, New Normal

Time flies. It seems only yesterday when I was blogging about our process of choosing a big school for Heinel. Six years passed by so quickly. Heinel is now in Junior High School.

During our six memorable years in Seed Montessori School, we witnessed how our son grew from a little boy to a young man. Friendships were developed not only with him and his classmates, but also amongst us parents. During their online graduation, I can not help but feel proud of Heinel and his classmates, they grew up right before our eyes.

As we close our chapter in grade school, we also end our journey in Seed. The idea of transferring has been openly discussed among the family since Heinel started his 6th grade. Since  There were many factors that we considered, but to sum it all up, we felt that Heinel is ready to a more traditional set up of learning. Letting Heinel in on the discussion led him to be prepared emotionally, mentally and psychologically on the concept of “the big move”. Since then we were scouting for options, reading about school’s programs and asking fellow parents.

However, when the pandemic happened, we also came to a point when we had to step back and reassessed our decision. With the new setup for learning, we also have new factors to consider:

• the school’s preparedness to the possibility of a year-long online learning
• “clarity” of communication lines between parents and the school

In the end, we chose a school which was precise and organized in terms of their goals and battle plan for the unique school year. I do not take offense on this with Seed though. The abrupt change is a major challenge and probably the biggest one any school has to face. We just felt that when technology is the key to this new setup, those with experience in online learning such as universities will have an edge. Their experience became their advantage.

And so off we are to a new adventure. This is it. We now have a high school kid!