Linked with discussions about friendships, another key theme that emerged was how the different children in the study managed their emotions during transition into the new school. Section 4.2 presents accounts from individual children and parents about their particular experiences.
4.2 Theme 2: Managing emotional experiences
As detailed in Table 3 on page 57, the children in the study had experienced a variety of schooling approaches around the world and as such, their emotional experiences were unique. The school’s ‘Settling In Workshop’ prepares parents for this, explaining that ‘children may not recognise what they are feeling’ or
‘maybe they do realise that they are feeling sad or angry or lonely but don’t understand why’ (British School, 2014:17). The interview findings showed that emotions ranged from positive feelings such as excitement and enjoyment, to anxiety, loneliness and confusion.
Louis in year five discussed how his emotions shifted throughout the year. He remarked, ‘my emotions were like a rollercoaster. Sometimes happy; sometimes sad; sometimes excited; sometimes I didn't want to go’. Louis and his sister Adele are twins and had left their small French school in Jakarta to move to Vietnam. While Louis described this ‘rollercoaster’ of emotions, Adele simply said ‘I felt sad because I had to leave my friends’. Their new school by contrast was much larger and they were no longer in the same class, which may have contributed to Adele’s sadness about leaving her friends behind. Luke in year
five also expressed sadness at leaving his old school and moving to a place where everything was ‘really new’, but had now made lots of new friends and was confident in school.
Seventeen of the children in the study spoke about feeling initially shy, nervous or scared on their first day. As Anh Dung in year one explained, ‘(on my first day) I quite feel a bit nervous …because I think everyone just don’t know my name’. Meanwhile Isabella in year one said she was ‘really scared’ and discussed feeling concerned about missing her friends and meeting the new teachers.
Similarly, Ji Hee was worried about speaking English. She had moved from South Korea and had never experienced an English speaking school before. When reminiscing about her first day, she said ‘I can remember. It feels like it was yesterday’. Lorenzo (year two), and twins Bai and Bo (year two) all initially felt very shy at speaking to the other children. Bo told me that they had been to three different schools both in Vietnam and Malaysia. Although he told me that he now feels ‘good’ about coming to school, he added later on in the interview that ‘I miss my cousins and school friends in Malaysia’. Other children in the study echoed this expression of sadness as well. For example, Jasia (year one), Samaira (year two), Jason (year four) and Adele (year five) all said they felt ‘sad’
to be leaving their old schools.
However, while there was an expression of sadness, in particular about leaving friends behind, there were also comments about feeling more ‘comfortable’
(Jiovanni in year six) or more confident (Katie in year six) in the new school.
There were six other children too who were also more confident and happy from the beginning, such as Jack (year one), Giang (year two), Hugo (year two), Prisha (year three), Candy (year five) and Chloe (year five) who all spoke highly
positively regarding their excitement about their new adventure to a different country. Candy in year five exclaimed, ‘I was quite excited about a new
adventure to another country’. Her picture in figure 8 explains the things that she found new and exciting about moving, such as the weather, learning English and making new friends:
Figure 8: Candy’s drawing
There were other children in the school who discussed learning English and this aspect of transition, along with other changes in academic expectations is
discussed in Section 4.3.
When interviewing the parents, Amanda explained that her attitude towards the move impacted on how her children felt:
From day one, we prepared them that they were going to be moving, so this was probably well before Christmas… and initially they weren’t too happy about that. We tried to make some connections with places we might be going and I think so over that period of time, over that three or four months, they gradually came around to the idea of us both being positive about it, then they were eventually positive about it.
Amanda’s husband, Paul’s comments reinforced what she said, and a key method of dealing with their children’s emotions was to lead by example. Paul and Amanda also said that they were sad to leave the last country they had lived in, but by being positive, this impacted on how their children felt as well.
Sarah’s comments are similar to Paul and Amanda’s:
First I think we tried to make them a bit excited about the country.
We showed them all the positives. … Then of course maybe we exaggerated the positives too much but we thought that would help
them too. When we arrived of course there were also negatives which we didn’t really prepare them for but, then one of the things we did is we showed them where we were gonna live, showed them pictures of the school and so on.
The word ‘positive’ is used in both interviews as a way of making the children feel excited about where they were going to move to. Central to this was highlighting the positive aspects of the move. The school suggests that this is a good idea and the ‘Settling In Workshop’ encouraged parents to ‘Plan things for them to look forward to in the future’ (British School, 2014:16). Michael and Sofia used this strategy too. As Michael explained when discussing their son:
We gave him something to look forward to, like a dog because we couldn’t have one in Hong Kong. The house is a bit small but when we move here we will have a big house and we can have a dog and it will be your dog, so he was looking forward to it and he
reminded us often.
By highlighting the positive aspects of the move, these parents felt they were able to distract their children away from the sadness of losing friends. Natalie talked about using this optimistic approach in more detail. Since this was the family’s first international move, it was an exciting time for them all:
We just thought it’d be positive and not consider the negatives … We talked in about February last year and they were—just acted so excited—and whenever we talked about it, they would just go,
“Eeee—yes!” you know, and jump up-‐and-‐down with excitement.
However, while Paul and Amanda’s children began the transition by feeling sad and moved towards excitement, Natalie’s daughter’s initial feelings were the opposite. As explored in Section 4.1, Natalie’s daughter Madison became very sad once she moved and realised that she was without her friends.
There was an acknowledgement by Amanda, Paul and Sarah that their children were sad at the start and missed their old lifestyles, but each of these parents
decided to try to limit their sympathy after some time had passed. As Amanda explained, she understood her children’s sadness but did not want this feeling to overtake the whole experience:
We also, maybe this comes across as sounding a bit tough, but of course we were sympathetic when we were leaving towards their needs, but we didn’t really pamper them in any way, did we. We went: ”This is it, this is the choice we’ve made as a family. You’re just going to have to deal with it. You’ve got, you’ve got four or five months to deal with it and you can be sad every single day if that’s what you’re going to do or you can have the time of your life for the next four months and then in the last week at school, yes you know you can cry your eyes out as much as you want.
Amanda and Paul had made the decision to leave as a family and this was not something to be negotiated. They accepted that the children would be sad and respected that, but did not let this be the overall feeling. As described in Section 4.1, Amanda’s children became happy and settled very quickly once they arrived and formed friends. This was combined with the excitement of living in a new country and having new experiences such as family motorbikes, holidays and sports.
Sarah’s comments about her children, Aodhan and Charlotte, were similar to Amanda’s in terms of building resilience in her children and limiting the amount of time in mourning over the life they were leaving:
I think of course there need to be some systems in place but at the same time they need to move on with their routine and you know they cannot be considered as special for a very long time. They also need to know they have to (make it) work and a lot of kids move every so many years and they have to, that’s why I said there was a point where that’s it now, no more talking about where we were before, no more comparing.
Sarah recognised that her children were sad about leaving the familiarity of their friends and school, but they quickly settled into a new school routine and were happy there almost instantly. They had built up a level of resilience towards this
through their experiences of international schooling and were used to making new friends. Sarah also adopted the ‘tough’ stance of Amanda, and encouraged the children to ‘move on’ and stop ‘comparing’ their old life to the present one.
By contrast, unlike the other families, Steven moved his son, Jason, from another local school and this was not an international move for them. As Steven
explained, ‘this is home … and when we moved from (the old school) across over here, it was an easy move’. He added ‘I think we’re pretty happy’. The move to a new school was not as complex as the other families because it was local, and arguably, this was less of an emotionally volatile time as a result.
When discussing the children’s emotions, Ji-‐Yeon spoke about her daughter worrying about not speaking English fluently. This relates to changes in academic expectations when compared to her previous school in South Korea and is further discussed in Section 4.3, as well as other comments from both children and parents regarding this aspect of transition.
4.3 Theme 3: Changes in academic expectations and learning to