Jozie's School

Jozie's in P1 (first grade) this year. We decided to have her go to Sam Yuk Middle School, which means Three (Sam) Education (Yuk) for kids ages 3-18 - three educations because it's based on educating the mind, body, and spirit. The school is run by Seventh Day Adventists.

I miss Jozie when she's gone all day. It's hard to have her not around for so many hours of the day, but of course by this age she's ready and will grow a lot from it. I still miss her though!

Here's Jozie on the first day of school (standing in front of the inside of our front door):

Here's Jozie after her second day of school (her first full day):

I loved that she came home feeling grown up and proud of herself.

Here are some pictures of the school. It's kind of horseshoe shaped with a large cement courtyard in the middle. The first picture is of the inside part (where the courtyard is) and the second is outside of that. I love all the color!

This is her classroom (her teacher, Ms. Laynie, is at the front):

Here's one with Jozie in the back corner talking to the teacher's assistant, Ms. Candy (she says they've moved into tables now and she's near the front):

Every morning the kids line up in the order of their student number to enter the classroom... Jozie's number 25 of 26.

Here's their weekly schedule. Putongua is Mandarin Chinese (the government requires all schools to teach Mandarin).

Here are some reasons why I picked this school:

• They teach in English.
• They have a huge playground area and a sandbox.
• They're in Taipa, so not too far away (we considered a Portuguese school, but it's in Macau and it has no playground).
• They have a garden area for students to grow plants (still in construction though).
• They do once a week interest classes and once a week Girl Scouts stuff.
• They're a public school so cheaper than private schools (though still several thousand dollars USD per year).

 We're a few weeks in now and I think Jozie will do just fine. Nonetheless I have some reservations:

• The kids wear uniforms - twice a week Jozie wears a white dress that looks like an early 1900s nurse uniform (she likes it though so that's all that really matters). She's not allowed to wear fingernail polish or necklaces. At least she gets to wear bows in her hair.
• They're pretty heavy on religion. Of course that isn't bad but since I love my religion I don't feel the need to have a lot of pushiness as far as theirs goes. Plus they're pretty authoritarian there so I hope they don't make religion unappealing by how they present it. I've looked through the workbook they use for "moral education" (taught each morning) and it's made up of regular Bible stories (the angels have wings and Satan has bat wings though, which I think is interesting).
• They're pretty authoritarian. Every morning the kids line up outside by class and gender, arm's length apart from each other. Then they have a prayer and listen to the school song and announcements. Sometimes the principal has them do things like "about face" and "parade rest," etc. I don't know why.
• Jozie says the kids in her class are loud and run around all the time and her teacher yells. They have an elaborate system of discipline that I think might be too drawn out and complicated to be effective (but maybe it's worked for them in the past).
• Even though they have a great playground, Jozie says she gets very little time to play on it during recess. They eat a snack and then any leftover time is for playing.
• The Girl Scout stuff so far has been the kids marching in lines around the courtyard. :) I hope that improves.
• Apparently they don't provide TP in their bathrooms. Jozie's supposed to bring little packs of tissues with her. She told me once she went to the bathroom without her pack of tissues and sat in their crying until a teacher gave her a tissue to use. (Adventure!!!)

Anyway, we'll see how things play out over the year and I'll try to be as supportive as I can be. I do think that overall they're definitely trying to provide a great school and I want to help them do that.

As far as school for Haven, I'm not sure what I'll do down the road. Here everybody starts school at age 3 (many Chinese kids do daycare way before that too). Since everybody's in school it's hard to get Haven opportunities to play with kids during the day, and there's no such thing as part-time preschool a few days a week. We'll do school stuff at home which is no problem, as long as I can help her get some experience with playing with kids without Jozie there. I love having this time at home with Haven and there's no way I'm giving that up this year!