Breathing in the crisp air of her brand-new room, Alexia Mouncher, 11, rips off the plastic cover of her canvas, prepping it for her first painting as an American.
Alexia Mouncher, 11, born in Wales, originally spent her educational career learning in an elite boarding school in the verdant hillsides of England.
“Try and get into more classes that you want to do instead of thinking about your future only. You need a balance between fun and the future. And I feel like it would it’s just something that made my life a lot easier,” Mouncher said.
Alexia boarded with several roommates in a reduced-size dorm on campus, sharing all utilities and a bedroom.
“I felt trapped. It felt like I didn’t have any personal space,” Mouncher said.
The majority of boarding school students follow the same path as their peers, which is laid out for them by the school. Typically, students take four core classes and go through a rotation of electives that include food technology, music theory, woodworking, and ceramics.
“We just did whatever they told us we were doing,” Mouncher said. “I felt like I wasn’t getting enough time to really be creative and make the projects I wanted to make.”
Eventually, Alexia got the chance to visit home from her school. While she quietly decompressed in her room, her mom tiptoed in. They were quiet for a moment before her mom popped the question: How would you feel about moving to America?
“I was like, oh, that sounds so fun! Yeah! I felt very scared of the future. I was leaving behind everything I had in Britain, which was a very big loss of stability,” Mouncher said.
Toward the start of the summer, Alexia’s family packed up and flew across the pond, landing at DFW airport during the first wave of COVID-19.
“It was very lengthy and difficult, the lines in the airport were insane. I missed the last few days of school, which was really annoying and sad,” Mouncher said.
After spending the summer moving boxes into a brand new apartment, Alexia began to realize her next big step: preparing for the first day of American high school.
“I was very nervous, What was even worse was that [I had] to go school clothes shopping. I didn’t really know what to get because I was in school uniform for my whole life. So I underprepared a lot,” Mouncher said. “It was a lot harder than I thought. I didn’t know what style I wanted to wear. I was very in between creating a new person of myself or just being the same that I’ve always been.”
Clothes were just the first step in the transition to a new school. Because of her late registration, Alexia was placed in whatever classes weren’t full at the time, mainly, theater tech.
“I was like, Oh yeah, I’ve done that before. I might as well do that. But the first day came along, and I hated it, I moved to Art I almost immediately,” Mouncher said. “Which is great. I’m so happy I did it, because you know, art is what I wanted to do.”
Pursuing art, Mouncher entered Shane Skinner’s ceramics program. Most students in this program looking to create art professionally start with Ceramics 1 then transition to advanced 3D Art and Design, and then eventually, AP 3D Art and Design. Lexi, however, jumped straight from Art 1 into AP 3D Art and Design.
“Lexi has really stretched her creative muscles in my class,” Skinner said. “When you’re interested in the subject matter of a class, it becomes less of “just another class” and more of an enjoyable class.”
Choosing her own classes was an experience entirely new to Alexia. Coming from a school with five non-core classes to a school with well over 100, Alexia had a lot of choices to make.
“People here just haven’t had the experience of not being able to choose what class you can take and so they care a lot less than I do. It’s very liberating to be able to choose what I can do, and when I want to do it. You have to go with what you love.”
