With every new semester, students transfer from all over the country, and even world, to Spring Hill. This movement can be overwhelming to students when trying to adjust.

“[It’s] a lot of new people and new information,” Elizabeth Ivanshinova, 11, said.

Ivanshinova remarks that the people here are more open-minded compared to her past school in Russia. They also notice that people are more willing to help out of kindness.

“It’s very different because it’s from another country. The teaching system is entirely different. You have different grades and different classes,” Ivanshinova said.

Autumn Piccolet, 10, transferred from Andrada Polytechnic High School in Arizona. They say that Spring Hill is more sports focused than their past school.

“My other school was kind of a ‘nerdy school.’ There’s more school spirit here than at my past school,” Piccolet said.

School culture is very particular from school to school, as even schools nearby have different kinds of people. Shawn Shi, a freshman transferring from Olathe East, experienced the difference in school culture.

“The people at Olathe East are less nice,” Shawn Shi, 9, said.

Changing schools can be difficult not just in terms of meeting new people, but also adjusting to the way the school is run.

“It’s different by the schedules and some classes, they would have you take them freshman year, and then I would take those classes senior year here. Right now, I’m taking older classes,” Piccolet said.

Piccolet says that in some classes, due to the way their old school was run, they had already learned some of the course content. But they said it depended from class to class.

“In other classes, it’s brand new. So, they [other students] may know something, and I’m like ‘I never learned this.’ It depends on the class,” Piccolet said.