7th Grade (S1) School Highlights

This school year has been an adventure on so many levels!  It will certainly be one that won't be forgotten.  Brenna started St. George's all-in, being completely enamored with all the choices.  The course selections were incredible!  In total she was enrolled for 17 classes for her regular school day.  What we consider as core classes (Math, Science, History, and English) were broken down into Physic, Chemistry, Biology, Modern History, Religion and Philosophy, Geography, Double Math, Double English, and Library.  Then add in supportive classes like Food Technology, Drama, Art, Music, Physical Education, Product Design, Information and Communication Technologies, and finally a wide selection of Languages to chose from, of which two were required.  Brenna chose French and Spanish, although she's trying to convenience me to switch one to Mandarin for next year.  She also jumped right into extracurricular activities with things she already loved and picked-up lots of new activities that would only be available to us here in Britain.  She signed on for Choir, Debate, Judo and Self Defense, Field Hockey, and Lacrosse.  Needless to say her schedule was packed with both before and after school activities four out of the five days a week and the sports competitions spilling over into the weekends.  Normally, I would have pumped the breaks on all these activities, but the school made everything very accommodating.  School actually felt like an extension of home.  I contribute it to the boarding school environment.

Her broad range of activities connected her with lots of friends.  And since the school is very international, her friend group was a wide collection of nationalities, not just from Scotland, but also England, Switzerland, Spain, and France.  It's been a very enlightening cultural experience.  The school also did a great job of supplementing the all-girls experience with joint activities with our brother school, Merchiston Castle all-boys school.  There were sports days, ceilidhs (a traditional Scottish country dance), and dances.

I always worry as we move around that Brenna will get behind in the US curriculum.  While the classes are completely different here, I'm very satisfied with the level of depth that she's taken in each course.  She absolutely loved her History and Math classes and we loved that she came home with a new dish to try each week from Food Tech.  I even feel she is well beyond the US standards for her grade in subjects like English.  At 12 years old Brenna officially became a published author.  She was encouraged by the english staff to participate in a UK writing competition that required a 100 word paragraph focused on the topic of "hunted" and Brenna's work was chosen to be published in a book series.

Here's her published work!

Here's a clip from her winter choir recital.

In terms of sports, Brenna was immensely disappointed to say goodbye to her Challenge Soccer team, as were we.  We had spent the better part of two years with these girls and their parents traveling all over southeast Texas every weekend.  Brenna's skills had drastically improved and she was already looking ahead to her chances of joining the school's soccer team.  Of course, the move threw a wrench in all those plans.  We tried to be encouraging.  We told her that we'd find a new league and a new team in Scotland but "football" isn't as popular of a women's sport here.  What is popular is field hockey.  We'd never heard of field hockey, much less seen it played.  My original thoughts circled around something similar to ice hockey, but this turned out not to be the case.  Her first experience with field hockey took place at the sports camp held the week before the start of school.  It's very similar to soccer in terms of strategy and the way the game is played, but with a stick and ball.  Brenna took an immediate interest in it and was excited to join the school's hockey team.  Because the sport is so popular, even within our small school our grade level hosted four separate teams; L4A, B, C, and D Teams.  Based on coaches initially appraisal of Brenna's performance in sports camp, she was placed on the C Team, mostly thanks to her athleticism.  She quickly caught on and within the first two weeks of play, she was moved up to L4B Team.  She continued her development throughout the year and eventually earned herself an invitation to play on A Team.  She was so excited and had been working so hard for it all year long.

Unfortunately, I only took video of the first game.  As with soccer, as she progressed through the ranks, she moved to a bigger pitch at a much faster pacer and I was more interested in following the game rather than capturing the video.  I do regret that now.  I had originally planned to take my camera to our last game to capture pictures and video then, but the world turned upside down and eliminated that option.  More on that later, but here's some video from her first field hockey game.  They play in skirts!  

And finally there was Lacrosse.  Unlike field hockey, I did actually know what lacrosse was, however we had absolutely no experience with the sport.  Brenna joined the school's team and kept at it until she developed into the one the teams top scorers, scoring 4 of 7 goals in one of the games.  It was very exciting to see her charge down the field and face off with a goalie.  She's always played back line dense in soccer and hockey, so to see her score was thrilling!

Indoor Lacrosse

Outdoor Lacrosse

The last clip in that video was taken March 10th and that's the day that everything changed.  While watching that game, the parents were notified that the joint Cielidh and Dinner that had been planned with Merchiston Castle School for that weekend was canceled.  The girls were devastated.  Most had already purchased dresses and made plans for what was to be the biggest joint event of the school year.  This would begin the quick downward spiral that would result in the closing of the school the following week.  I'll post more about our experience with Coronavirus in a separate post, but for now I'll just focus on the school impacts. 

The Cielidh was the first to go, but it was quickly followed by another huge blow when all sports fixtures were cancelled.  As the coronavirus situation in Europe continued to progress from bad to worse, it was no surprised when it was announced on March 18th that the school would be closing.  On Friday, March 20th, the girls wrapped up what would be their last hockey practice with lots hugs and tears.  As I mentioned before, the school has a large international attendance and many where attempting to make plans to return to their home countries ahead of impending travel restrictions.  The girls actually didn't know if they would ever see each other again.  And as it turns out, some we would not.  It was hard for Brenna because she understands the significance of goodbyes better than most.  On March 23rd, the whole country went in lockdown.

The school moved to distance learning the following Monday and we picked up classes right where we left off.  Brenna followed her class schedule just as she would if she had physically been at school.  She had to be registered online by 8:45 am each morning and she progressed through her classes until 4 pm in the afternoon.  All classes were migrated to Microsoft Teams and teaching was held virtually.  We originally held on to hope that we might return to school following the long Easter holiday, but that was not the case.   As Easter came and went, we had to come to grips with this virtual reality.  Not only did we miss out on the Cielidh, but also the week-long Outdoor Education Week that was to take place on Great Cumbrea Island on the west coast of Scotland and the end of school year dance.  We lost the end of hockey season, half the lacrosse season, and the whole track and field season.  While all these things are insignificant in the big picture, for a 12 year old it was still very disappointing, especially considering we went from full throttle to dead stop.  It was a significant lifestyle change for our family and everyone else's as well.  

I give immeasurable credit to St. George's.  They made the unplanned move for the entire school to distance learning literally overnight and still maintained their high standards.  They did their very best to create stability and make things as engaging and creative as they could for the girls.  The pastoral care team stay connected to each girl personally each week to make sure they were mentally and physically taking care of themselves.  I honestly don't see how they could have done things better. 

In terms of classes, the girls continued through their course studies and the workload remained the same.  Expectation remained high.  We completed science and art projects and a massive amount of creative writing.  In languages she took verbal speaking evaluations and in drama she created her own commercial.  Brenna studied hard and took all her finals as expected. We also had two focus weeks, one on Scottish Cultures and another on National Health Services.  The school continued with its traditional house competitions through virtual contests and a house sports day competition.  Brenna won first place in Home Hurdles and Homemade High Jump and second place in Triple Jump.  It really was sad that she missed out on the track and field season.  We also had all-school assemblies, bi-weekly PE work-outs, virtual sports award ceremonies, and even a virtual tea party to say goodbye to S1.  We were as jam-packed virtually as we were in normal life.  Still, we were desperately ready for the school year to end.  While we appreciated the Herculean efforts that the school put forth to keep the girls engaged, it was beginning to wear thin being shut away in the office in front of a screen all day, every day.  Finally, on June 25th after 14 weeks of distance learning, we finished off the most unusual and unique school year of Brenna's academic career, which I think says a lot across six schools and three countries.  Here's a collection of random distance learning moments for the last three months.

7th grade is officially in the books, but we're looking ahead to a very uncertain summer.  As of this posting we're at day 102 of lockdown here in the UK.  We plan to make something out of this summer as lockdown restriction begin to ease, although we're uncertain what that entails just yet.  Beyond summer, we're all just hoping for a normal return to school in August.  I'm not sure we can endure anymore distance learning!