“A competitive edge”: Why this US-based family loves online school

A global upbringing

Before the family found King’s InterHigh, Berik’s schooling had been as diverse as his talents. Though the family now lives in the Midwest, Karla moved to Asia after Berik was born, where the first few years of his education were spent at a private school in Shanghai co-run by the governments of China and France. When they relocated back to the US, Berik continued his French education at an immersion school until he aged out of the available grades.

it’s only natural that Berik has a strong aptitude for languages given his broad horizons, speaking Spanish, French, and Mandarin alongside English. That strength has even translated over to Berik’s love for music. “When he was young and started music lessons, he told me, ‘I want to learn the language of music.’ He sees the world through language,” notes Karla.

After such a global upbringing, when Karla moved her family back to the US, she struggled to find schools that suited Berik’s learning style. While he had been advised to skip grades, Karla wasn’t sure that that would solve the problem — nor would it be ideal for his social development.

It was at this crossroads, in part, that Karla decided to explore alternative options. Since they had lived overseas and have family living in England, Karla says, “King’s InterHigh wasn’t unfamiliar to us.” On top of that, Berik sees himself living outside the US when he’s older, with plans to apply to the University of Cambridge or Oxford. With all things considered, Karla decided King’s InterHigh would be the best option to prepare her son for his globe-trotting future goals.

But, her international outlook wasn’t the only reason why Karla turned to online learning for her son.

“It’s been night and day”

Despite Berik’s natural curiosity and love for learning, the family found themselves facing a major challenge when they settled back in the US: Berik wasn’t enjoying school. What should have been a time of growth and excitement turned into a period of frustration and disengagement.

At first, Karla couldn’t understand why Berik had become so resistant to education. By his own admission, he would purposely oversleep in the mornings to miss school or feign illness outside the building just so he wouldn’t have to go inside. With Berik surrounded by highly motivated and driven people in his daily life, his mother was bewildered by what seemed like “lazy” behaviour.

“But, it really just boiled down to him being so bored,” Karla explains of her realisation. For one, he felt that his education had become a waste of time. After a long school day, Berik would come home frustrated and tell his mum, “I can do in 20 minutes what we do in seven hours.”

In local rural schools the family tried, Berik also struggled with outdated information — on one occasion, he even brought home a history textbook that had not been reissued since 1997. “He threw the book down and said, ‘You can’t be serious,’” says Karla. On top of that, polyglot Berik missed having so many language learning opportunities at school.

More issues persisted outside the classroom. Describing her son as “a very focused individual,” Karla notes that he struggled to get along in some of his previous school settings. Distractions in the classroom kept him from giving school his all, and while he wasn’t bullied himself, “he just didn’t like seeing bullying go on in the school environment.”

All in all, Karla says, “That impacted his overall mental and physical health.” In her words, the difference between Berik’s personal motivation and outlook then and now has been “night and day.”

The King’s InterHigh difference

While Karla says Berik used to hate school, things have been turned around completely in his first year at King’s InterHigh. “He is a totally different kid than he was the year prior,” she states emphatically, and for numerous reasons. Not only has he been more engaged and enjoyed his time with every teacher, but the morning battles have also completely disappeared.

Even when Karla is away travelling, Berik handles his early morning school schedule with ease: “He gets himself up, he does his work himself; he has never complained, never whined.”

Alongside Berik’s increased motivation and more positive outlook on school, Karla has also seen a world of difference in the curriculum Berik is studying at King’s InterHigh, which she describes as “knocking it out of the park.” In Karla’s view, not only is it perfectly suited to her son’s love for learning, she also finds herself “blown away” by some of the more unique topics students get to learn at King’s InterHigh.

“The life skills classes, what you’re teaching kids in terms of how to ethically interact with AI and how to safely interact online,” says Karla, “these are the issues that are impacting this generation so quickly, and at a pace that parents are not prepared for.” In contrast, she explains, she hasn’t found those things touched upon in schools she’s tried “until it’s too late.”

Plus, Berik himself loves the vast range of subjects on offer, giving him the ability to gain all the core knowledge he needs for the future and choose additional courses that fit his interests.

Outside the classroom

There are lots of things Berik and Karla enjoy about King’s InterHigh classes, from the curriculum to the “accessibility” Berik has to contact his teachers whenever he has a question. That being said, there’s just as much that Berik loves about his online school life outside of lessons — take the clubs, for example.

For the last term of this school year, he took up band club, computer science club, and our maths tutoring club. One of our many academic support club options, Karla says the maths sessions have been invaluable in helping Berik catch up. Band is his favourite pick this term, but earlier in the year, he loved ‘Amazing Animals’ the most. “He felt really special in the animal club because he could take his camera out to the chicken barn or show them his puppies,” says Karla.

Getting to connect with other students around the world from home is another thing Karla says excited her about joining King’s InterHigh. Berik has made friends with several classmates already, including a student in Peru near the family’s own time zone who Berik plays video games with online.

Those online friendships balance with his in-person connections, including his friends on a neighbouring farm site. And, since they travel so often, Karla and Berik have aims to meet up with more classmates and their parents around the world over the summer.

Fitting school around any interest

Next year, Berik is also looking forward to taking part in more of the global community events at King’s InterHigh, like the international food festival recipe book. Recipe development, in fact, is one of Berik’s many unique skills, which are part of the reason Karla decided to take the online schooling plunge.

Despite his young age, Berik is already following in the footsteps of Karla’s fascinating career in agriculture and the food supply chain. Alongside helping to create recipes for a cookbook she has coming out this year, Berik is even working on his own amazing passion project: creating his own nutritious, environmentally conscious alternative to Nutella. “This summer, he will go to Piedmont, Italy to meet with the hazelnut growers,” explains Karla, adding that they’ll then connect with cocoa farmers in Cameroon. The project has been years in the making, and it’s something Berik couldn’t be so involved with if he had to be physically present in school each day.

Similarly, he wouldn’t have the time to get his hands into the family business and develop some of the truly unique talents he’s grown over the years. Berik has become their resident expert in incubation and even runs the company’s poultry genetics incubation programme, as well as helping out with marketing and social media.

To Karla, these are invaluable opportunities, and making sure he’s “getting the best opportunities possible” is one of the roles she finds most key as a parent. Likewise, she says Berik loves studying in a different time zone because he can get his whole school day done early — “then he’s got all afternoon to do all these other things that he loves.”

On a path to the future

With so many passions under his belt, it’s almost impossible to predict what Berik will go on to when he leaves school. “Other than college, I’m not fully sure yet, “he says, “but I have a couple of years to figure all that out.”

Berik sees himself pursuing his interests more, from cooing to music to animals. Karla, meanwhile, wouldn’t be surprised to see her son thrive in geopolitics one day. “He sees things through a different lens,” she explains, remembering a time when a former boss jokingly asked whether Berik would be able to start advising the government when he turns 13.

For Berik, who perceives the world in unique ways, a unique education is exactly what he needs to thrive. With learning that caters to his interests, fits around his pursuits flexibly, and is there wherever his family travels, Berik himself says he’s “been doing really good in subjects and improving in subjects that I was bad at before.”

And, Karla insists, he’s not the only one who could benefit. With the rise of homesteading and rural living post-pandemic, families who can’t find the right school options nearby frequently ask her what she’s doing for Berik’s education. Equally, Karla sees just as many potential benefits for the children of her friends living in China, India, and beyond: “If you have a child who has a passion for education and learning,” she states, “they would also thrive with learning like this.”