The Hillmans in Beijing

As most of you know, we will be leaving for Beijing, China in August to start the next adventure of our lives. We will continue to post on life in Tanzania and the progress of Peace House Secondary School, we thought we’d take a break and say something about where we’re headed!

Personally, we will not be living within the major metropolis of Beijing. We will be living in an area called Shunyi, about 15 minutes from the Beijing airport and on the very outskirts of Beijing. We are quite far away from the industrial areas, so the air quality is much better in that area. We will live in a compound that has swimming pools, tennis courts, and a bowling alley. The streets are paved so the kids will be able to bike and scooter around, something they’ve missed doing (especially since our bikes were stolen in our robbery in October). Our potential house is a detached town-house style with 4 levels and 1-2 rooms on each level, so we’ll get our exercise going up and down! We will have a housekeeper as we do here, but not gardeners and security guards. We will have a car, but will do much more biking. The school is 5 minutes away, there is a Chinese grocery just outside our compound, and a shopping area with a Western grocery, Starbucks, Dominos, and health/dental clinic is a 15 minute walk away.

We will be able to come and go from school together and see the kids during the day, which will be great. Mark will be the Director of Communications, which makes him similar to an assistant head of school. He will oversee aspects of communications between the school, parents, and community, strategic planning, and marketing. He is hoping to be able to work in some time coaching kids. He is already attending a conference this summer and an international conference in the fall!

I will be teaching special education to grades 3, 4, and 5, an age I haven’t worked with before. There will be another special ed. teacher at the same level. Disability incidences are low, as most international schools will limit the type and severity of disabilities that they will accept. The impact of students learning in a second or third language, however, impacts on services that are provided.

International School Beijing has about 1,800 students from age 3 to grade 12. It uses an American-style curriculum, which will be very different from what the kids are now used to, and will take some getting used to. Because of its size and urban location, it offers far more extracurricular activities than our current school—Scouts, band, choir, orchestra, a theatre, gyms and weight rooms, running tracks, and sports teams with competitive leagues (including baseball, hooray!) It is much more like the schools our kids would attend back in the States. Instead of 15 students per grade, there will be over 120 per grade. Everything is very shiny and fancy-looking; at the same time, we have loved our school here in Arusha and know that the quality of the education here is comparable to what we would get anywhere. We are definitely trading a small-town, small-school feel for something much more upscale and urban. There is a much higher turnover in the student population (about 50% of the student body is there less than 3 years) and draws a large number of diplomatic families and people working for multinational corporations. Chinese nationals are not permitted to attend international schools, so any Chinese students there hold passports from other countries. There are a large number of American and Korean students and the majority of the teaching staff is American and Australian. You can click here to see pictures of the school--I can't get them to copy in for some reason.

More later on other things about China and Beijing!