Beijing Expat Families Opt for US Public Schools as Stopgap

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Much has been said for the folks who are either stuck abroad or residing in Beijing, and whose kids are currently participating in e-learning platforms. Despite the inherent shortcomings of online classrooms, especially those that were put together with little to no warning, schools have been working tirelessly to ensure that their students get the most out of this unique and confounding situation.

Nevertheless, some families who found themselves indefinitely stowed away outside China’s borders and contending with wild time differences have searched for other means by which to educate their children.

Chanté Greene and Lacy Henderson are both single moms from America who moved to Beijing in 2017 and 2019, respectively, to take positions at Beijing International Bilingual Academy (BIBA). Both of them arrived stateside on Jan 30, and, as fate would have it, even ran into each other at the airport.

The Greene and Henderson families enjoy a makeshift sleepover

While both attempted to go the online route for their kids initially, they quickly realized it was to the detriment of their children’s education, and thus enrolled their kids at local schools in America.

As Henderson explains, “My daughter is in kindergarten and online classes are not ideal for her at this time.  She needs the assistance of her teacher’s in order to understand any of the Chinese instruction. While learning Chinese is a key component of living abroad, I did not feel as though spending time online — very late in the evening (US time) — listening to Chinese lessons that she cannot understand without someone translating for her was a conducive use of our time.”

Greene echoed a similar sentiment: “Initially, my children were completing their online assignments through our school in Beijing. With the 13-hour time zone difference, we being behind Beijing, it started to take a toll on the children because they were not getting adequate sleep or falling into a normal routine here. In addition, my parents live in the countryside so internet connections are very poor. Having already been stateside for two weeks, this did not seem like the best outcome if this situation were to end up being long term. So, I decided to enroll them in the schools near my parents’ small town.”

When asked about the ease of temporarily enrolling their kids at a new school, and whether this is a common occurrence in the US, the two moms had slightly different experiences.

According to Henderson, who is currently based in Saint George, Utah, “you can enroll anytime you want, as long as it is at the school you are zoned for according to your address.” Moreover, as someone who taught in the US for seven years, she says that “it was not uncommon to receive a new student or lose a student weekly,” adding, “the transiency rate can be rather high depending upon the location within the US.”

For Greene however, the size of her small town in Georgia meant a little more explanation was in order. “Being that we’re staying in a small town, the schools had never heard of a situation like ours so there was a little confused about how to gather [and]process paperwork. They ended up pulling whatever records we had prior to leaving the US, [and] testing my children to ensure that they’d be appropriately placed in the correct grade levels”

Moreover, given that they were coming from Beijing, the school, “asked for boarding passes or other proof to see that we’d already been quarantined at least 14 days.”

Another difference between Greene and Henderson is that, as Greene explains, “Because my children attend a bilingual school in Beijing, the school also decided that it would be good for them to be paired with the language and support staff for children of migrant workers, just in case there is some reverse culture shock in the beginning for them.”

As for that ‘reverse culture shock’, both moms say their kids are, for the most part, happy to be back in the US. Henderson says that her daughter is happy to have started gymnastics training again, building on the skills she was developing with Flips and Kicks here in Beijing. However, she also mentions that her daughter, “does not like talking about living in China, as she feels as though she is a “spectacle” and would rather not mention it so the kids treat her like other kids.”

Likewise, Greene says that her kids, “miss their friends and teachers of course, but they quickly learned that they have lots of cousins in the schools here so that was a perk for them.” She also mentioned that because her two youngest kids are now riding the bus to school, a “hurdle” that she admits her “mommy nerves” had to get over, the experience has given them “a sense of new independence.”

Henderson and Greene took care to point out that all in all, this has been a “difficult and highly stressful situation”, and certainly “not a vacation”. Ironically, however, the 13 hour time difference has been something of a blessing. Given that they don’t have to be in their online classrooms until the evening, both moms are relishing the time they get to spend with their kids during the day.

As for when the two families will return to Beijing, Henderson says they’ll come back whenever they’re told they can come home. Greene, on the other hand, has chosen to let her kids finish the remainder of the school year in the US.

“My children will finish out the remainder of the school year here in the US because I don’t want to uproot them again this late in the school year. The plan is to start them fresh again in Beijing when the 2020-2021 school year begins.”

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Photos: Courtesy of Lacy Henderson and Chanté Greene, unsplash

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