Day 1413: Suriname International School

Celebrating Gilliam and Grayson’s milestones is amazingly awesome.  And with Grayson it has become doubly awesome because he’s finally at that age where he is developing lasting memories; especially surrounding moment of significant personal impact.  Like his first day of school.

Now, due to the fact that we’re living overseas, these milestones can be pretty interesting… well… different.  They can be a lot different… at least compared to what I remember of my own similar milestones.

Let’s just say my kindergarten experience at Murdock Elementary was very different from Grayson’s Suriname International School (SIS) experiences.

For starters, Murdock had around 800 students spread-out from kindergarten through fifth-grade.  Each grade level had multiple classes and each class had between 24 and 32 students.

SIS has around 35 students spread-out from pre-k through twelfth-grade.  Multiple grade-levels are combined to make each class (for a total of six classes) and no class has more than ten students.

So yeah… size can really changes your perspective on things. 

Now, in comparison, most international schools are a lot smaller than your average suburban American public school.  But even compared to international schools SIS is very small.  Then again… SIS is only two years old and it usually takes a few years for a school to gain traction. 

That said, I’m not really sure how much SIS will be able to grow; Suriname does not have a large expat community.

There is actually another international school in town catering to expats.  They were established in 1966, but only have around 85 students (K – 12).  They have a really nice facility too, however, Serena and I shied away from this school because of their very strong evangelical Christian affiliation.  Serena and I feel that religion is something best taught at home, so we went with SIS.

Oddly enough, this is exactly why SIS was created in the first place.  SIS was actually founded by parents from that other school who felt the religious message had cast a shadow over the academics.    

Although Paramaribo doesn’t really have a large enough market for two international schools, SIS has been able to take over 30% of the expat market in just two short years.  I think that’s pretty amazing. 

But still, despite its size, Grayson was able to do some really cool things… like learn a little Dutch, play Santa Claus in the SIS Christmas Showcase, and even serve as the kindergartener’s representative to student council.

As parents, it’s been fun being involved, even at such a small school.  Serena was voted in as PTA president and I was asked to help revamp their website.  It’s been a while since I’ve built a site, but it has been a fun project.  I’m just now finishing it up and a few pages still need content, but I’m pleased: www.suriname-internationalschool.org.

It is kind of a shame.  We really thought we were going to be with SIS for three years… but in the end it was only for one school year.  Oh well.  At least we were able to contribute to the legacy.