Did you ever change schools in upper-elementary or higher grades? How did it work out?

I moved when I was starting the 5th grade. The move was actually more upsetting than starting at a new school. Leaving my friends made me sad. Once in my new house, and becoming familar with my new environment the school change was secondary. It helped that I had over a month before school started.

Elementary is very different than higher grades though. Kids who are older, especially for girls, I would want to get an idea of what girls are wearing (if there is no uniform) and visit the school to get the lay out since they will be changing classes.

If the move happens when the child would be changing schools anyway, like starting jr high or starting high school, then I would point that out to then so it does not feel like it is many more changes than what would have been happening where they lived before.

I think so much of it depends on the personality of the particular child, and how they fit in at school. A very popular girl in high school might be very discombobulated at first when nobody knows her at the new school. A child who was hating school previously because they were being bullied or teased might be thrilled with the new school (I have seen this happen more than once).

The experience of a teen in new high school is going to depend upon a number of factors. It seems like it would mainly come down to the acceptance of new-comers, as well as the personality of the new person.

Changing schools (at any age, really) can be tough. But as @JLeslie notes, one of the biggest potential negatives (the necessity of leaving friends and comfortable social roles behind) can also be one of the biggest potential positives (the opportunity to “reinvent” yourself if you’ve found yourself in bad positions in the past, or just want a change).

In my K-12 years, I went to a single elementary school for the first three years (K-2) and a single high school for the last three years (10–12). But for the seven grades in-between (3–9), I went to eight different schools. And the times when the changes were good rather than bad, were the times I made sure to take advantage of the chance to be who I wanted to be at the new school, rather than remaining what the kids at the old school thought I was.

So if you’re looking to help someone through such a transition, I think that can be a good element to play up. And the less they liked their previous school, the more I’d play that up. :)

I attended every school in town. It was lonely.

I changed school in the middle of the year in sixth grade. We went from living in New York City to Seattle. It was my most traumatic move, because of the vast cultural differences.

I went to 3 elementary (before private school), 1 Jr. High and 3 High Schools. It was stressful because you never get passed being the new kid or any friends you do make you have to leave behind quickly. In a way I think that’s part of why friendships became so valuable to me later on. Still, jumping schools more often than not leaves your kid in a state of constant “odd man out”.

I changed schools twice during high school. Leaving my friends was hard, but the toughest part was ending up in a whole new environment and having to meet new people. Eventually everything goes back to normal.

It’s kind of depressing also when kids are very aware the new school has a crappier education. I moved very young, as I said in 5th grade, but even then I knew the new school was way behind my old school in math. The playground sucked, just monkey bars. This all drifted away into the back of memory and I adjusted of course. Recently, I was on facebook, and friends of mine posted some photos of me and the other kids in elementary school doing a project, and I realized my new school did nothing like it. And I see their status updates and what they are interested in, and it is clear to me the education and culture of the two different cities had more differences than I had remembered.

A woman I go to the gym with, they just moved during her daughter’s 11th grade year. The new school is not at the level of her old one, and has much fewer programs. Her daughter knows it, knows she was sort of cheated. It’s not terrible, and it is a lesson in dealing with current circumstance and not dwelling on what can’t be, but it kind of sucks.

I changed elementary schools a couple of times, but the only one that really affected my was leaving a progressive district that had already switched from the junior high model to the middle school model, in the middle of 6th grade. In the old district, I was in the very first group of 6th graders to attend a brand new middle school. In the new district, I was back in an (old) elementary school. That was so freaking weird! Kind of surreal.

On the upside, though, I made a ton of great friends there, and adjusted well, overall.

If you’re moving in the summer, one thing that will probably help is making sure your kids have the opportunity to meet future classmates before school starts. If they like sports, sign them up for a local summer league. Take them to a community pool.

At one point, I went to five different schools in five years. I went to the same elementary school until fifth grade, then went to a Montessori school in 6th grade, then a regular Middle school in 7th, then my family lived in England for a year because my parents (who are professors) got their sabbatical. Then, when we came back, I went to high school.

8th grade was pretty terrible. I was good at school and actually got a bunch of High school credit for the classes I took, but people picked on me because I was different, and I acted pretty weirdly, which only isolated me more. The Montessori school was pretty cool, but also uncomfortably religious. My math teacher was an ex-nun (and it showed), and the Biology program on the computer was called “Adam and Eve”. You could choose to have the fig leaves on or off. Ironically, this was one of my first experiences with pornography. So, strangely, the mediocre public school was probably the best Middle school experience I had. I met a friend there I’m still close with today, at least.

I grew up with friends from kindergarten to tenth grade. Then we moved far away from a small town to a huge city for eleventh and twelveth grades. Before school started in fall, I had 3 months in a strange house/town/culture to cry my eyes out, call my old friends and feel very depressed. Then the “get acquainted dance” came about and I met my first boyfriend. Then I met my new two girlfriends in class. All was fine after 3 months of total devastation.

Throughout my life, I was only ever at a particular school for a year or two. The longest I ever spent at one school was high school (3 years).

I think I may be uniquely adaptable, to where starting a new school was never a huge stress for me. I always go into situations like this quietly, I observe, figure out how to fit in, start to dip my toes in the social waters, and then eventually take the full plunge.

That’s not to say my educational experience was 100% delightful… it wasn’t. Junior high was a particularly evil kind of hell. Not only that, I was picked on/made fun of every single year I attended school, K-12.

Anyway, I’m probably not going to be much help here because no one ever really did anything special to help me acclimate to new schools. Sometimes a teacher or school staff would be extra nice, sometimes I’d hit it off right away with some kids. I’ve just always been excessively independent, so I don’t think my parents had much need to coddle me in this regard—usually, I was good at facing new situations and figuring out how to adapt.

I went to a new high school.I made more friends and it worked out just fine.:)
I still saw my old friends because it was around the time I learned to drive or they did.

I had a very traumatic switch from Catholic School into public school in the middle of a school year and then I moved from the almost all Catholic City public school out to an almost all Jewish 8th grade class in the suburbs. That was another shock to the system! Then I graduated High School a semester early and Friday I was a Senior in high school and the next Monday I was a Freshman in college! HS that was a mind bender!

I changed high schools because my first one was horrible and dangerous. Their idea of AP classes was a joke. Half my teachers went through the day toasted in some fashion and gangs roamed the park behind the school.

The new school was in a much wealthier area and it showed. While there were a few problems in the beginning where people had a problem with the neighbourhood I lived in at the time, once people saw that I wasn’t a thugette, they were mostly friendly. I had no help from my guardian, as she projected her hatred of school onto any conversation I might try to have with her about it. All I can say to a kid transferring is just be open and allow time and familiarity to do its work.

@Cruiser I graduated high school early, finishing midyear in December, and then January I was in a class at the community college.

@JLeslie Back when I started all the students were smoking in the hallways and drinking coffee! I was like…HS I am not in Kansas anymore! lol!

The one time we moved was 2 months into grade 8. Things would have been fine had the school I moved to been a little more welcoming of new people. I was effectively shunned for two years. It really baffled me because I was a nice person. School didn’t start to become easier until I graduated into grade 11 at the senior high. I met a lot of people there and we became good friends.

That stint in junior high really scarred me though.

I was in one school system with all the same kids from 1st through 7th grade. We moved out of state in 8th grade and I was placed in a gifted program (no new kids had ever joined the group) and it was Hell. I was able to put up with 8th and 9th grade there because I knew I would be moving in two years. I moved to Japan for 10th and 11th grade and it was wonderful (all the kids had been in and out of international schooling and they knew how to make friends fast and were very open to new kids attending). I moved back to a new school for my senior year. By this point, I had learned how to be open to meeting new people and fitting in. I got the lead in the school play and had a wonderful senior year (all things considered). My new school was very open about allowing me to include my accomplishments from my school in Japan in the senior year book so I looked like the well-rounded kid I actually was.

I think a lot of the success in switching schools comes from being open-minded. Making a point of meeting one or two kids before school starts can really help (as suggested above), but you really don’t know what popularity group the summer kids are from and it can also create havoc when school starts. I think the biggest thing is to get involved in activities (sports, etc.) so you meet people with similar interests.

We moved in the middle of my 4th grade year. I was miserable. We moved 500 miles away from all of our family and from a major metropolitan city to the middle of nowhere. My new elementary school was at least a year behind the one I left. I was told to take my supplies box home because we all shared there. That turned out to mean we shared a big coffee can full of broken crayons and a number of rusty scissors. Everything about that school was inferior – those idiot kids would sing Yankee Doodle Dandy to me and I was from the midwest! I remained the new kid through 5th grade.

By 6th grade, my first year of middle school, everything was fine. Only two elementary schools merged there, but it was enough. I had adjusted to the sub-par education by then, but took advantage of every opportunity – like studying Latin in 7th grade. By the time I reached high school (which actually shared a building with the middle school) the school district offered several AP courses.

As someone above mentioned, check out what the kids are wearing if you are moving a great distance. I was teased mercilessly because I didn’t wear jeans every day – I didn’t even own a pair of jeans. They just weren’t the thing for girls at my old school.

We moved when I was in 6th grade, and it worked out very well for me. My first middle school was very large with hundreds of students. I literally had no friends at school. We moved to a rural area and my new school had less than 30 kids in the entire 6th grade. We all went from math, to science, to English, as a group.

In the smaller school, I didn’t feel so overwhelmed and shy. I quickly made two best friends as well as several other good friends. All of us are still friends.

I was nervous about moving. We didn’t move far, but going from suburbs to a rural area was kind of a change. I worried the kids would talk and dress differently, which was kind of silly. I practiced saying ain’t until my mom threatened to smack me. Luckily, kids didn’t go to school barefoot and in overalls and most of them didn’t speak like hicks. It didn’t take long for me to feel comfortable there, although I realize that wouldn’t be the case for most kids who move during middle school (obviously, from reading the above).

@MissAusten I forgot all about speaking differently or using different words. There were some strange adjustments – they looked at me like I had two heads when I said purse (they said pocket book) or barrette (hair bow or hair clip). I had to ask what they meant when they said stove eye (burner) and “cut on/off the light” (turn it on/off). There were several more.

Something to prepare your child for if you are moving to a significantly different area.

@Supacase Great point. I have couple of stories where kids were very embarrassed when they moved because of language differences. One is a girl in Jr high who asked if anyone had a rubber in class. Seems in England rubber is eraser. Of course there were many giggles. And another is a child who said, “I beg your pardon,” and the kids giggled told her you only say that when you fart, to make a joke about yourself. She was only asking the person to repeat themselves, because she had not understood what they said.

Here is the best Q ever, if I do say so myself, regarding how people say things around the country.

I went to an elementary school which was k-6 (it was the last year that school had a sixth grade) I attended k-6 and transferred halfway through sixth grade to another school. It was a Lutheran school that was pre-school through eighth grade. It was also much smaller. I went from a school with multiple classes per grade (about 400 students per graduating class) to a school with one per grade (only 15 in my class) and some blended classes (7th and 8th grade combined). This was by far the worst mistake my parents ever made. That was no easy transition. I left that school in eighth grade and had a much better experience at a larger school. I think making that change prior to high school was helpful.

I went to at least 6 different schools, growing up and I found that the first couple of time were the most challenging but soon after, it set it. Changing schools wasn’t actually a big deal, however, the relocation of shifting homes is tough. It’s not as bad as you’d expect it to be. Good luck!