Ask the Mom of a Kid in Boarding School

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Hi,

Because I had dental surgery yesterday and I’m looking for distractions from the ouch, I thought I’d see if anybody was interested.

My son is 14 and in the 9th grade in Australia (so year 9, and our school year is from January to December.)

We made the decision to place him in boarding school this year. He’s had behavioral issues for some years now, and I was at a loss to decide what else to do. It’s a big step for all of us, but it’s working out really, really well. Essentially, his problems had gotten to the point where it was difficult for us all to live together - theft was a huge part of that.

What would you like to know? I can tell you what his typical day is like, and he’s home now for school holidays, so I can ask him things.

I will say that as a family this has been the thing that seems to have fixed a lot of our problems, although I wouldn’t recommend it to just anybody.

Ask away!

2

Ooo, timely! I do have a few questions: how did you decide on the particular school? Did your son feel comfortable there from the beginning? Was there any adjustment period when he came back home to being with his family? Have there been any differences in his grades, and if so for the better or for the worse? Do you feel like you have enough communication from the school about his progress, academically and socially?

My son is just 13 and in the 7th grade, and we’ve been thinking about boarding school as one possibility for the future. I was in a boarding school myself (all-girls, Catholic, taught by nuns) in the last 3 years of high school and it was a greatly positive experience for me.

3

Which school? My nephew’s in Year 11 at boarding school in Sydney.

Does your son find the food OK? Do the boarders have to eat in the dining room at lunchtime, or are they given packed lunches so they can join the day boys outside at lunch?

What sort of accommodation is there? Dormitories?

4

shantih:

**How did you decide on the particular school? **

I started by looking at what I could afford, which pretty much left me with Catholic country schools. Then I considered distance, and narrowed that down a bit further. That left me with a couple, and I went and spoke with the headmasters in each place.

This left me with an all boys, Catholic school three hours (ish) from home. Which is a good distance - far enough that it’s not silly to be boarding, close enough that I can drive there and back in a day if I have to.

Did your son feel comfortable there from the beginning?

It took a couple of weeks, maybe a month, for him to be totally comfortable. We made this decision for him, really, due to our family issues. Plus, he’s an only, so living with 40 guys was a Very Big Shock. Now he totally loves it and has discovered his inner sports guy, after being the nerdy, card playing kid for most of his life.

Was there any adjustment period when he came back home to being with his family?

This is his first school hols, and I will say yes there was a day or two for us all to adjust. He has different responsibilities at school, and I think he was a bit shocked that he didn’t just get to come home and lay about. :smiley: He’s been out seeing local friends a lot and he volunteers at Taronga Zoo, but I still expect him to do the sort of chores he had when he was here full time.

Have there been any differences in his grades, and if so for the better or for the worse?

Better in some, worse in others. His English grades have picked up dramatically. His science grades are about the same, as are some other classes. He’s failing Religious Ed miserably, and I’m getting him a tutor. Although I have an evangelical background and went to a Christian university, I became an atheist long before my son was born and never taught him much of anything about the Bible, for or against. So he doesn’t even have the basics (Adam and Eve, Job, Abraham and Issac, John the Baptist, Jesus and Peter, nothing.) I hadn’t really thought of that sending him up there, so it’s my fault as well.

**Do you feel like you have enough communication from the school about his progress, academically and socially? ** Absolutely, and this is one area where his school excels. I have a log in where I can see daily his attendance, his upcoming assignments, his grades on his past assignments, his schedule (sport, chess club, library work, cantor and choir) and what medications he’s taken or if he’s seen the nurse (seasonal allergies, Panadol, whatever.) He also has a tutor group, and I’m in e-mail contact with his tutor. I’ve e-mailed the headmaster before, and he answers me personally within a reasonably time frame.

I know not from the school itself, but I speak to him daily, too on FB or on his mobile. So I can compare stories :smiley: and also support him (great job on that test or what do you think went wrong or how can you fix that, what’s your plan, stuff like that.)

His school is really very excellent.

Thanks for the questions!

5

Cunctator:

Which school? My nephew’s in Year 11 at boarding school in Sydney. To be honest, I couldn’t afford Sydney schools and I couldn’t see the point in boarding him so close (I’m in Newtown.) He goes to St. Stanislaus in Bathurst. It is a fabulous school that had problems some time ago, and thus is still in the news. Those problems are over now, though. I get a bit defensive of Stannies.

As an aside, have you sung in the Marble Hall? It’s amazing. My son is in cantor and choir, and they sound so good in there!

Does your son find the food OK? Yes, he loves the food. He charms the refectory ladies for more sweets. I’m not so sure I love the idea of the food, it’s pretty carb heavy, but really since he’s in rugby or tennis and lifts weights and runs, I suspect it’s fine.

Lent came as a bit of a shock, though. :slight_smile:

Do the boarders have to eat in the dining room at lunchtime, or are they given packed lunches so they can join the day boys outside at lunch? I haven’t asked, but I know he does eat with the day boys, so they must have some sort of portable food. His best mates up there are day boys. There’s lots of contact between the boarders and the day boys in other areas, too.

What sort of accommodation is there? Dormitories? The dorms are the least best bit, and he’s there till year 12, when he gets a private room and bath. Stannies is very old, and the dorms are big, drafty sandstone places. He has what they refer to as a stall, which is three sort of seven foot dividers put together in a “U” shape. In that, he’s got room for his bed, with his locker underneath, a desk with a shelf and corkboard, and his press - a closet that locks with shelving. He’s got a desk chair. It’s a small enough space for most that if you pull out your chair, you can’t get into bed.

Boys dorms are segregated by year, and each year gets a wing with the year 12 boys getting a whole floor with rooms as mentioned. So you board with the same boys throughout.

He lives with residents from Charles Sturt Uni up the road, and they supervise his homework time. The dorms are clean and nice (mostly, except they smell like teenage boy.) He’s got a common area with a fridge and microwave and TV on his wing. They have a bigger, air conditioned common area downstairs open to all the boys.

6

From your description I thought he might be at Stannies. Excellent choice. It’s a great school. Over the years various country cousins of mine have gone there. The boys have all loved it and their parents have been very happy with the teaching, ethos etc.

I’ve not sung there, but I have heard the boys singing there. Yes, it’s great.

It sounds fairly standard boarding school fare. My nephew’s at Kings here in Sydney, and his mother (my sister-in-law) has similar concerns. My brother just says it’s “vital for rowing and rugby”.

I bet. :slight_smile:

That seems to be the standard approach now. In previous years there used to be a bit of a distinction between the days pupils and the boarders at some schools, but nowadays it’s much more of an “all in together” feel.

Again, that sounds pretty normal. I know that my nephew is looking forward to year 12 next year because he will get his own room.

I’ve had to organise live-in conferences over the years for various Catholic societies, so I’ve seen the boarding accommodation at most of the Sydney Catholic boarding schools. They’re all pretty spartan, although there have been moves to improve things over the last 10-15 years. And the “rigours” of country boarding school dorms are legendary. My sister-in-law went to Frensham in Mittagong, where the girls slept on verandahs that were exposed to snow during the winter (or so she says - there could be some embellishment of the truth going on. :))

7

My high school had a majority of students who went home for lunch, about 1/3 who ate in the school every day. About 5% of the total student body were boarders: boys only, although the school itself was coed. The boarders were all in these two large dorms, with an adult also sleeping in the same room (the Brother Nurse for the youngest boarders, and one of the Fathers for the elders). If a student’s eating arrangements were being changed for a short time (for example if your parents were going out of town so you’d be eating at the school, or if you boarded and were going to have lunch at a friend’s), it had to be prearranged by the parents. Some of the boarders had been sent there because they’d been getting into some sort of trouble back home, some because their homes were just too far from the nearest high school to commute daily; the first group would be more likely to be spending weekends at the school, but once they made friends locally they’d often get invited to spend the weekend with these: this kept them away from whatever trouble they would have gotten into at home, while allowing them to go out with the rest of us. One of my classmates, who boarded there for 11th and 12th grade, had arrived looking for something to fight but been surprised to find nothing that fought back; after he’d been there some five weeks he asked how come we didn’t ask why he was there, we replied that if he wanted to tell us we’d be happy to know it but if he didn’t, it was none of our business. He barely said a word for a couple of days and then the chip on his shoulder just sort of melted away, poof

From the PoV of one of the day students, I think it was good that we got students from “the big village”, from the smaller villages around and the occasional boarding “exotic” (hey, they could even be from as far as two provinces away!) Specially once we got old enough to go to summer fiestas in other villages, we had classmates in pretty much every village in the area and we’d play local guide for each other :smiley: