Bidding - Part 3

Meet Anna.  She is our "middle child"  She is beautiful, she is strong, she is witty, she is caring, she is confident, she is funny, she has a smile that will knock your socks off and when she cries, she scoops her little finger under her glasses to wipe away the tears and it literally melts every. single. bone. in your entire body. I absolutely adore her. 

She has been delayed in reading for some time, and we noticed some quirks to the way she reads and deciphers words.  All of those little quirks led Erik and I to have a conversation about exploring the way Anna learns.  This summer, we went through some testing and discovered that Anna has dyslexia and dysgraphia.

This diagnosis leads me to our third consideration when bidding for posts.  Education.

This is a biggie for us, and this is the point in this blog where you will hear me GUSH about probably the best experience we have had in Sri Lanka - The Overseas School of Colombo.  It is an International Baccalaureate School and it has been amazing. We homeschooled Anna for two years prior to enrolling her in OSC.  However, after we saw how Ella flourished in that school and discovered the support that was available for Anna's dyslexia diagnosis, we decided to move forward with enrolling her.  It is awesome.  She is really thriving.  It will be one of the things I hate to leave in June. It is also one of our considerations when deciding the next post. 

Erik and I have carefully researched the school options at the posts we are deciding to bid on.  We have reached out to Embassy staff, families and in a couple of instances the school itself to help aid in our decision. 

Here are our school considerations:
1. IBS program - Dyslexics learn in more of a "Big Picture" type style.  The Primary IB program is set up in unit studies.  Unit studies are really great for big picture type learning.  They have a theme or an idea and most of the learning ties into the overall theme. 

2. English Speaking School - Being overseas even this short period of time has taught me the importance of knowing multiple languages, however, English is the universal language and it's my children's mother tongue.  For Anna, especially, she needs to learn in English.  New school, new culture, new language... that's a big whammy for kids.  English speaking school will aid in that transition. 

3.  Size of the expat community enrolled in the school.  Most Diplomats' kids go to the international school in their respective city, however, not all international schools are truly international.  For example, in Colombo there are several international schools, but only 2 or 3 that have even 1/4 of the enrollment made up of international children.  They are mostly local more affluent children enrolled in a "private" type school. 

4. Quality of education for ALL years.  One thing that surprised us when we entered the Foreign Service was that there were posts out there that had "quality education" through the primary years but recommended boarding school for the high school years.  That is a great option for some families, but not for us.  We naively thought we would be offsetting that obstacle by the fact that we had a couple of homeschool years under our belt, but the reality is, if we are a homeschooling family that accepted a post with an inadequate school - there would be no other expat families there for our children to befriend.  They would be lonely.  AND our children range from 2-11 so we will need to be sure quality education is available from Kindergarten - High School as George will start KG while we are at our next post and Ella will start High School  (CUE THE TEARS!!!!!).

These are just a few of our considerations when looking at available education for our children at the posts we bid on.  What do value in choosing your education path?   I would love to hear!