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Foreign Students Block Boarding Schools' Fall

Posted on: Wednesday, 31 August 2005, 00:00 CDT

Aug. 30--A few thousand international students have saved America's small boarding schools.

At Chaminade College Prep, in St. Louis County, admissions director Roger Hill organizes three trips overseas annually. He meets wealthy families in fancy hotels in China, South Korea, Mexico, Hungary and Russia, among others. Foreign countries will be represented by 46 of Chaminade's 54 boarders this year, likely the most ever.

The Missouri Military Academy, 120 miles west in Mexico, Mo., enrolls one international student for every two Americans. At the $29,000-a-year Thomas Jefferson School in Sunset Hills, one in five students is international. Even Principia, a St. Louis school for Christian Scientists, and Brehm Preparatory, a school for children with learning disabilities in Carbondale, Ill., regularly enroll foreign pupils.

"To some degree or another, everyone has international students now," said Bill Rowe, head of school at Thomas Jefferson.

Teachers praise these pupils for their contributions to the classroom. Administrators admit schools would struggle without the extra tuition.

But now, the same schools that need foreign students may be enrolling too many.

Both U.S. and international parents have complained: Americans don't want too many overseas pupils in their schools; international parents want their children to learn English and go to a good college.

If the trend continues, industry leaders say, boarding schools could lose their markets.

Thirty years ago, all but the strongest boarding institutions seemed headed for extinction. U.S. parents were less willing to send their children away; teens weren't as interested in the old, stiff establishment. Boarding schools had to scramble. To survive, many went co-ed. Some added day students.

Other schools looked to emerging foreign economies.

At first, the market grew slowly.

Then overseas families realized they could get their children into American colleges if they sent them to American prep schools. Some students were sent to board as early as the seventh grade.

Now international students buoy enrollment that has grown less than 3 percent in the past decade, according to the National Association of Independent Schools.

"Many boarding schools continue to really have to work to fill their beds," said association President Patrick Bassett. "The international population has certainly been a boon."

Since 1988, the number of foreign students at the association's boarding schools has almost doubled, to 6,700.

Mike Mulligan, chairman of The Association of Boarding Schools, is quick to point out that many of the oldest, most elite schools neither have the same problems nor rely on the extra tuition; they're bolstered by thousands of American applicants and $100 million endowments.

But Mulligan roundly praises the impact of international pupils in the classroom, as do others.

Said Thomas Jefferson teacher Brian Howard, "You're talking about Buddhism in ancient history, and you have a Buddhist in class."

International students bring an intensity that challenges local students, teachers say. At Thomas Jefferson, they make the honor list and enroll in Advanced Placement classes. Usually they fit in, too, dating classmates, bonding with American friends over sub sandwiches and playing on sports teams. Thomas Jefferson teens even elected a Mexican and Taiwanese to student body office.

But, to be sure, sometimes the new students have a hard time adjusting.

Local teachers say they often begin the year quiet in class and may shun social events. The students themselves say it's difficult to resist the lure of fellow nationals -- easy conversation and similarities bred in the homeland.

But when that group is large, it can cause problems.

"If you get too many kids from Japan, Korea, China -- wherever -- instead of integrating into your school culture, they become their own subculture," said chairman Mulligan, also headmaster of The Thacher School in Ojai, Calif.

In Colorado, Korean parents complained when too many of their children were placed together in a dorm. In Pennsylvania, a group of Koreans followed normal social pecking order -- respecting their elders -- but took it too far, asking younger students to run errands, do duties and finish homework.

Jae Yoon, 16, transferred to Chaminade from Boston. He said there were simply too many Koreans at his old school. Yoon said he likes St. Louis better, despite boarding with 29 other countrymen. Chaminade resident director Michael Francis said he tried to put Koreans in rooms with students from other countries, but there are just too many. "We've got a lot of Koreans," he said. "Everybody's got a lot of Koreans. That's the economy that's really thriving right now."

It hasn't always been Koreans. Former Chaminade boarder Narongyot Jintanont, now 27, remembers when his house mates were mostly Thai, like him. They grouped together then too, and Jintanont didn't speak English for three years, he said.

Now U.S. administrators are pushing back. Some boarding schools forbid students from speaking their native tongues in cafeterias and classrooms. Some find families to sponsor international students, taking them home for both Thanksgiving and evening TV. Others have created separate academies for the foreign teens -- more than 200 boarding schools now have English as a Second Language classes. And while most now set caps on the number of students who can come from one country, many are even more aggressively recruiting in new, untapped countries. Last week, 38 schools had already signed up for a trip to Taipei in October. More sign up weekly.

At Chaminade, first-year students have a two-week culture class before school begins. They visit the Arch, tour Anheuser-Busch brewery and take a train to Chicago.

This year, the school even has engineered mandatory lunch seating for freshmen. Teachers have all seen international students segregate themselves from the 900 daytime students. So on Wednesday, on Chaminade's first day of class, associate principal Stephanie Kraelmann stood in the middle of the cafeteria, directing waves of adolescent boys to seats all around her. She hopes all the freshmen -- international or not -- will meet new friends and break old cliques.

But Kraelmann has had an uphill battle. The international students at Chaminade have already learned whom they like spending time with.

"Koreans over here, Mexicans over there," said Hin Tsun Lai, 16, from Hong Kong, nodding to each end of the dorm hall.

Yet, that same day, resident director Francis pointed down the hall.

There, a Korean and Mexican talked and laughed, all in English.

-----

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Copyright (c) 2005, St. Louis Post-Dispatch

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Source: St. Louis Post-Dispatch

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