High school selection for my daughter was always a contentious choice. Her mom wanted our daughter to attend a school close to her neighborhood. I had better schools in my residential catchment but our daughter didn’t choose those either. Instead, she attended a school which accepted her to the International Baccalaureate program. It wasn’t close to either parent’s home; it was a good 30 to 40 minutes away by public transportation. In the end, her choice won out. Her decision took precedent over both parents’ geographic proximities.
After two years, she experienced the chronic problem of underfunding in the public educational system. Even though her IB program was in a relative bubble in terms of academic and extracurricular priorities, aspects of the program were still cut. And parents weren’t offered the choice to subsidize given that some parents may not have the wherewithal and so cutting was the fairest decision!
My daughter wanted to stay in the IB program to participate in what was promised. So in the end, we searched for an alternative school within the city that kept her in the program but with better financial and faculty support. We found one! In the separate Catholic school board! As elated as my daughter was, I worried about her uphill climb on the social structure as she was entering her junior year of high school as a new student.
But my daughter was willing to start over socially and if the quality of the education and institution was better, then perhaps the students (and the parents who send them) have higher selection criteria for education than those who put their kids in a school based simply on their district.
They got to know my daughter’s neutrality and genuine desire for true friendship, based on commonness, not allegiance.
She quickly confirmed that there were well-established cliques in the new school. And it was obvious that some girl groups simply didn’t gel with other girl groups. She didn’t want to take sides and when she was challenged by girls in one group, she responded in a very mature way.
Quite confidently, she said, “Look, I don’t want to get involve in the history and conflict of people in our junior and senior years, especially when I wasn’t a part of it. I’m new and am just meeting everyone from scratch; I’d like to be neutral.” That’s respectable, one girl-group responded. “Besides, I came from a school where there was a lot of catty conflicts and I left all that behind. I don’t want to be a new reason why girls are beefing.”
Not only was I impressed with my daughter’s maturity, I think the girls of the conflicting groups were too. They got to know my daughter’s neutrality and genuine desire for true friendship, based on commonness, not allegiance. This made my daughter an even more sought-after friend. Two months into the semester, she was friends with more people at her new school than she had in two years of her old school!
This was confirmed as evidence that she brings home more friends after school from her new school than she did from her old. I couldn’t be happier. It was so simple. It was so natural. Suddenly, I felt comforted that it’s the next generational that will turn out way better than the previous.
