I moved back to the US when I was 14. After years of living abroad, it was a culture shock to come b

Publish date: 2024-07-13

2023-11-16T15:43:01Z

I moved back to the US when I was 14 and it was a culture shock.
I was used to international schools with smaller classes and more diversity.
It took a while for peers not to see me as the kid with the weird accent, despite being American.

My family moved back to the US unexpectedly when I was 14, just in time for me to start my freshman year of high school. That meant that I would attend an American public school for the first time since first grade.

That summer, "Mean Girls" came out. Watching it, I felt mounting anxiety as reality set in: I had left behind my global, third-culture kid, international-school life. All the stereotypes of American high schools came to mind, from football players and cheerleaders to cliques and social hierarchies.

I went to international schools abroad

Growing up abroad and having experienced many formative years of education in the international-school system was one of the greatest privileges of my young life. I attended schools in Japan and Luxembourg, both of which taught students of over 40 nationalities. Teachers hailed from a fair number of countries as well: To name a few, I had German, French, American, Australian, Japanese, Irish, and Canadian teachers.

I found the quality of education in international schools incomparable to that of US schools. Small class sizes — about 15 to 20 students per class — meant a lot of face time with teachers, who had the time to cater their lessons more directly to their students.

There was no need for state testing or to check the boxes of state requirements, so there was ample room for creativity and experiential learning. Instructors filled our days with music, art, drama, and language. I learned how to play various African drums, held a mock trial for "Of Mice and Men," planted my own vegetable garden, rewrote and performed a Charles Dickens play, got dressed up in ancient Egyptian attire and cooked an Egyptian feast, and spent time in a traditional Japanese farming village.

It was a multicultural environment

The schools integrated the multicultural environment into the learning process. I learned Japanese, French, German, and snippets of Luxembourgish, and conversations in Swedish, Dutch, Danish, Portuguese, and many more languages surrounded me constantly. The schools hosted around-the-world days that featured traditions and foods of the many nationalities represented at the schools. The schools intentionally designed field trips to immerse us into our surroundings, from visits to the historic sites of Hiroshima to museums showcasing the art history of Florence.

Had I stayed for high school, the opportunities for social outreach on an international scale would have increased. Volunteer opportunities to build schools in Cambodia or Tanzania were part of the curriculum. The International Baccalaureate, or IB, is also the standard at international schools, a departure from the American education system. The IB involves a rigorous two-year program in the last two years of high school that requires students to focus on tracks such as languages and arts or math and science, culminating in intensive exams.

Going back to the US was a culture shock

The transition from international schools to the US school system for high school was an incredible culture shock. I landed in Gig Harbor, Washington — an incredibly beautiful town that lacked almost any trace of cultural diversity — about an hour southwest of Seattle.

The small-town mentality that takes root where most residents were born and raised in the same place was a marked departure from the revolving doors of the international-school system. I could count the nationalities of students in Washington on one hand, and when new people learned that I'd moved from Luxembourg, they'd ask what state that was in.

Other questions included whether it'd been difficult for me to learn English and where my accent was from. There was no one with whom I could share a common experience because western Washington was as far as most of my peers ever traveled by that time.

It took me a while to fit in

My educational experience was equally as disappointing because my first two years of high school were riddled with tests — such as the Washington Assessment of Student Learning — and a repeat of many past units I'd already learned in international schools.

The massive class sizes — about 400 students per grade — made for more impersonal experiences with students and teachers. The vast number of students and state regulations limit teachers' freedom to creatively shape their curricula. Where school once engaged and excited me, I didn't feel like the curricula at my US school challenged me creatively or intellectually.

By the time I was in my junior and senior years of high schools, AP classes had become my haven. Finally, I'd found a set of teachers in the US who pushed me academically, inspired critical thinking, and incorporated experimental-learning elements into their classes. Equally, I found a set of students who were more attuned to the world. I no longer felt quite as much like an outsider, like the girl with the mysterious accent, or like the perceived foreign-exchange student who never left.

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