From NC Homeschooler to UK State Schooler

The boys have survived, even enjoyed, three days of school. Enrolling them was such the adventure that even they are relieved to have started. Weyland soon starts preschool, and I will have something I’ve not experienced for ten and a half years: regular days without children.

To understand our schooling journey, one must know how we learned in the U.S. When the transfer opportunity opened in late June, I had already planned — luckily not paid for! — activities six days a week. Garrett would have Shakespeare, Latin, and musical theater. Both boys would have swim team, tap dance, Team Time at the YMCA and Chapel Hill Homeschoolers “Friday Enrichment” classes. Sundays we’d be at Eno River Unitarian Universalist Fellowship Religious Education; I was stepping up as co-chair of the RE Committee. It would have been our busiest year ever, and even though most classes wouldn’t start until September, in June I had playdates and carpools and teaching swaps (you teach mine, I’ll teach yours) arranged around them.

Homeschooling does not necessarily mean staying home or doing schoolwork. Our approach is unschooly and eclectic — I owned (but seldom used) curricula only because I accepted hand-me-downs. So the kids are nimble with mental math and slow at pencil and paper exercises, advanced in reading comprehension but slow to blossom as independent readers, intensely knowledgeable about things that grab their interest and sadly lacking in other fields that just never came up.

If they never went to school, they didn’t need to be on grade level. But an international move changes things. Adult friends shared their childhood memories of living temporarily in the UK. School, meeting the local kids and doing what the local kids do, was central to their universally positive experiences.

I tried to picture life if we homeschooled. Where would I find liberal homeschoolers without a prescribed religious dogma or distrust of unschoolers? Where would we find the park days, playdates, clubs, and classes that are usually advertised by email lists? How would I know which teachers’ philosophies I could embrace? Would I drag three boys along to churches and libraries while I pursued my historic research?

I spent years gradually learning from and growing into the homeschool communities in Durham. I couldn’t recreate that quickly, and I also knew that activities would begin with the school year, in early September. Without time to assemble homeschool activities and friends, putting the boys in school became, clearly, the expedient option.

We spent the summer “torturing” the boys with math and reading lessons, trying to better align their skills with their age peers. The boredom of the six weeks in London without schedules really readied them: Garrett and Tallis were EAGER to be out of the house and in the company of kids.

If only we could have gotten them there sooner. We got to the UK as fast as we could, two weeks in advance of Tom’s start date (coincidentally, the start of school). We hoped our children could start with the school year, but no such luck! Although we paid a deposit on our flat before the first day UK children were in class, our boys were delayed a month. We needed a rental contract and copies of utility bills with our address — which of course you can’t get until you move in. Then we submitted paperwork to the Camden school office (that’s our borough in London) with a list of preferred schools. I dropped it off in person Thursday after we moved. I know nothing about the Royal Mail, and maybe it would have made it there overnight, but I wanted to be SURE! The lady on the phone told me to expect 20 days to assign the boys and the lady at the desk where I dropped it off told me 10 business days, so I was thrilled to get a call on Friday afternoon with our first choice school assignment.

Our requests were simple: we wanted something not church-run (there are both Church of England and Catholic state schools quite near us) within walking distance. Why did we get assigned in one day? According to a friend of my mother in law, the date to tally up students for the sake of getting next year’s budget is near, so they would want my kids’ included in the count. Also, I requested a non-church school (I hear that church schools are considered better, even if their rating scores aren’t superior. I wonder if they have fewer minorities and more students of English descent? Hmmmm….) and one in which I knew there were plenty of openings in year six for Garrett. Once Garrett gets in, his brother has priority if they have any way to fit him in — and they did, so Tallis got a year three spot. They also give priority to children living nearby, and their new school — Kingsgate Primary — is a 0.7 mile walk away.

So Monday morning I called the school to schedule our initial visit, Tuesday morning we completed paperwork in the head teacher’s office and paid for school uniforms (white polos with embroidered school logo, and green sweatshirts with the same) and Wednesday was their first day of school.

Tuesday after Weyland’s nap we had a terrible time hunting down the required gray trousers. When I asked, the lady in the office gestured dismissively behind her; of course the Marks and Spencer on Kilburn High Street had them. Wrong. They probably had them back in July and August, but by October, they had Halloween decorations, no clothing. We trekked up and down the street five times before, standing outside yet another unsatisfying clothing store while typing queries into Google maps trying to figure out what to do next, an older gentleman stopped to ask if I was lost. He told me to go to the Marks and Spencer downtown on Oxford Street and helped me look at the map to be sure I got the right place.

Four tired people — Weyland was riding on my back, protesting “no go shopping!” — hopped on a bus. Tallis entertained Weyland, Garrett paid careful attention to the sign announcing the next stop so that we wouldn’t miss ours, and I texted Tom: come meet us, we’re tired out and I need help, and before you do figure out something near there that will do for dinner. He suggested pizza, I said perfect. When Tom found us I was in the school uniform section — in the basement, in the back of the children’s department — trying in vain to find reasonable sized clothes for my kids. They aren’t obese, but they aren’t skinny, either. Would they need something two years larger than their age year? Three? More? Did I want pleated front or flat? Adjustable waist I wanted for sure, and even though I dug through the “short” section I knew there would be hemming in my immediate future.

With a swath of sizes and cuts in our arms, we trekked back upstairs (the children’s changing room was closed due to a leak) where thankfully children were allowed in the women’s dressing room. Eventually seven year old Tallis ended up in size 11, and ten year old Garrett in size 15 (he really needed 14 but there was not a single pair of gray 14s left in the entire store). After a lovely dinner at Pizza Express and a nice simple tube ride home, I was too tired to hem the trousers. I marked them, I trimmed them, I rolled the hems and pinned them, but I could NOT sew them before sleeping. Next morning I stood in the kitchen for half an hour sewing hems into four little legs, with gray silk thread I’d brought over for weaving medieval laces. The running stitch I put into Tallis’s trousers (I keep typing “pants” and then erasing it because I’m trying to learn to use “pants” in the British way to mean undergarments) was so bad, I thought that it probably looked like a normal person sewed it.

Sigh. At least I got a decent hem stitch into Garrett’s, and we were just barely NOT late for school.