homeschooling
keep it in the family
Kate Springer meets the Hong Kong parents who are homeschooling their children.
Parents Brynn and Josh Steimle read with their children at home.
Brynn Steimle Originally from the US, Brynn and Josh Steimle have two kids: 7-year-old daughter Magdalena and 5-year-old son James. The organiser of Hong Kong Homeschool Meetup group (www.meetup.com/hongkong-homeschool), Brynn explains why she and her husband think homeschooling is the best option for their family. At what point did you start thinking about homeschooling? I grew up with friends who were homeschooled, and by the time I was a teenager, I already knew I wanted to homeschool my children. My husband was interested in homeschooling before he met me too. As Magdalena, our oldest child, grew up, the thought of sending her off to preschool did not appeal to me. I didn’t want to give up that time with her and I also didn’t like the idea of sending her to be shaped by other adults whose backgrounds and values I didn’t know.
18 | Expat Parent Schools Guide
When and why did you move to Hong Kong? We moved to Hong Kong in June 2013 because we were in the process of adopting a child from China. We wanted to live in Asia as a family and become more familiar with Chinese culture and language — to help us better understand our daughter’s native culture. We feel like living here will help with the transition for her and for our whole family. How old were the kids when you moved to Hong Kong? When we moved to Hong Kong, James was three and Magdalena was five. We opted to keep James at home, for the same reasons we didn’t send Magdalena to preschool. Although we had originally planned to continue homeschooling Magdalena, we felt that in Hong Kong there were two things she could learn at school that we couldn’t teach her well at home: Chinese language and Chinese culture.
How did Magdalena do in school? We opted to send her to half-day K3 at a local Cantonese-language kindergarten that we had heard great things about. Prior to entering K3, she was fun-loving and loved learning. But the homework was excessive, and combined with frequent oral and written testing at the school, she was no longer excited about learning. She also started complaining regularly of stomachaches. At first, we thought she might have a gluten intolerance, and altered her diet. But nothing changed. What did you do? It was very difficult to get her to go to school after each break and she began to miss a lot because of her stomachaches. In May of 2014, two months before the end of the school year, we withdrew Magdalena from school and began homeschooling her. It didn’t take long for the stomach aches to disappear, and we realised they were actually anxiety-induced.