What to expect when moving to the US with an incoming 10th grader: A parent’s experience
The photo ID machine whirred at our new high school two days before the first day, and my son Luka still hadn’t lifted his chin. He was 15, three weeks off the plane from Seoul, wearing that faded Manchester United hoodie he’d refused to replace even after the cuff frayed all the way through. When the photographer asked again, Luka mumbled something in Korean under his breath, and when I nudged his arm to ask what he said, he snapped “Nothing. Can we just leave already?”
We moved for my husband’s engineering job transfer, and we’d debated the timing for months. We thought 10th grade made perfect sense: he was old enough to remember his home, fluent enough in English to keep up, and we’d beat the 11th grade rush of college applications. No one warned us how closed off 10th grade life in the US already is. Groups are set, routines are fixed, and the whole system is built for kids who’ve grown up in the district, not kids who show up mid-stream.
Our first big shock came three days before school, when we got the email from guidance. We’d submitted all his translated 9th grade transcripts, but the school only counted four of his eight required classes toward graduation. They suggested we re-enroll him in 9th grade to catch up on credits. Luka sat on our kitchen floor that night, next to a stack of still-unpacked manga, and said he wasn’t going. He’d already done all the work, he said, and being the oldest kid in a class of 14-year-olds would make him a freak. We couldn’t argue with that.
I’d stumbled on one small forum post a month earlier that mentioned placement tests for transfer students, so I didn’t just accept the evaluation. I emailed the guidance counselor the next morning, not asking for a special favor, just asking if we could schedule Luka to test out of algebra and biology within the week. She said yes, and later told me most transfer families never think to ask. Luka passed both tests, and we got him slotted into 10th grade like we wanted. That small win took a huge weight off both of us before the first bell even rang.
The hard part wasn’t academics, though, it was the social gap. First week, he came home every day, dropped his bag, and locked himself in his room to play games. On Wednesday, I brought him a root beer and sat on the edge of his bed until he finally said he’d eaten lunch in the bathroom stall all three days. All the cafeteria tables were full of groups that had gone to middle school together, no one moved over when he walked by, and he was too nervous to ask to squeeze in. I wanted to blurt out the generic thing people say—just go ask, they’re nice kids—but I remembered when I moved for a job in my 30s, how awkward it felt to crash a group of coworkers who’d been friends for years. So I didn’t say that.
I’d already printed the after-school club list from the school website, and I’d seen the gaming club met every Wednesday. I’d ordered the new Zelda game he’d been wanting for months, hidden it under the kitchen sink for a rainy day, so I pulled it out and set it next to the club flyer on the counter. I said “This came today. A bunch of kids who play this are at the club. If you want to check it out tomorrow, I can pick you up at 5, no pressure if you’d rather just come home.” He went. First day he just stood in the back, but by the second week, a kid on his team asked him to play Valorant online after school.
The other thing that helped more than any school tour was connecting with a kid who’d done the same thing a year earlier. I found a local group of expat parents on Facebook, and there was a boy a year older who’d moved to the district as an incoming 10th grader from Busan. I invited his family over for burgers, and that boy told Luka all the unwritten stuff no counselor would ever mention: don’t stand in the middle of the hallway between classes, the Spanish teacher gives extra credit if you bring her donuts on Friday, how to ask for an extension on a paper without sounding like you’re behind. That’s the stuff that actually makes a new school feel less scary, not the guided walk through the gym.
People always say kids adjust faster than adults, but that’s not true for 15-year-olds. By 10th grade, they already have a full identity built around their friends, their routines, their favorite spots back home. They’re not little kids who can just slip into a new group easily, and they don’t want to leave their old lives behind like it never mattered. It’s okay that they don’t.
Three months in, it’s still messy. Luka still has days he comes home angry, says classes are too slow, that no one gets his jokes about Korean variety shows, that he misses his old school. He still stays up till 1 a.m. every Saturday facetiming his best friend from Seoul, because of the time difference, and I still have to yell at him to turn off his light for school the next day. I don’t tell him to get over it, or to stop talking to his old friend. I just leave a glass of water by his door and let him have that time.
He hasn’t made a best friend here yet, and I don’t know if he’ll ever feel like this is home the way Seoul was. But he eats lunch with his gaming club friends now, he joined the school’s Valorant team for the district tournament next month, and he got a B on his first US history essay—no small feat when you’re learning all new content in a second language. Last week, he asked if we can order Korean fried chicken for dinner this weekend, because he’s bringing one of his gaming friends home to try it. That’s small, but it’s enough for right now. We’re still figuring it out, one small step at a time.
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