SCHOOL TALK: Entering an Alien School Culture
Imagine spending days in a room full of people speaking a language you don’t understand. Or staring at an assignment with words you cannot decipher. Or inching along a lunch counter with foods you’ve never seen before. (Where else in the world do they eat fried mozzarella sticks!)
It sounds tough, but this is the experience of a growing number of students in our local schools. Their families— from Japan, China, Brazil, Israel and other countries—choose to live Downtown because we’re near the Financial District; others work at the UN, teach at universities, or work in film, technology or journalism.
What happens to the kids who are thrown into a melee of children talking about American video games and TV shows, playing games of tag with complicated rules, moving swiftly from math to reading to science class and recess? How do they manage?
Astonishingly well. In just weeks, they begin to learn English, make friends, figure out how to play Foursquare, and follow classroom routines. The fifth graders go off on three-day trips in the fall, and, with the help of the English Language Learner teacher, are speaking up clearly in class.
This is not to say it is easy. Parents report that the children are exhausted at the end of the school day, and I’m sure there are tearful moments. This band of English Language Learners is learning resiliency along with American culture.
But last spring a group of Japanese families came to me with a concern. They were worried that with the growing number of families from Japan and elsewhere, there might be resentment from local families. One parent wondered if students from overseas should have to pay tuition.
I assured her that we welcomed international families and the diversity they add to our community, and that public school is free for all children. I thought this would calm their worries, but they had more on their minds.
They heard that in Scarsdale there had been tension between the large Japanese population and local American families. Japanese children, they had also heard, felt isolated at school and spent most of their time with other Japanese students, and that mothers often struggled alone with school-related issues.
I told the families that we had experienced nothing like this at PS 89. When we can, we pair a newly arrived student with another child who speaks the same language, who functions as both a buddy and an interpreter. We also introduce new families to others with their language, to provide support.
But this was also of concern to the parents, who worried that their children wouldn’t learn English and integrate into the community if they spent the day with another ELL student. A parent whose child had been at the school for a couple of years felt it was an imposition on his child to have to interpret for a non-English-speaker.
In recent years we have received requests from international families that their children be placed in class with children of the same culture, and about an equal number have requested the opposite. I was beginning to understand this conundrum.
The outcome of that meeting with the Japanese families was the creation of an International Families group. We meet every other month to socialize and hear from school staff about various topics requested by the parents, such as how the ELL teacher works with students at school; how parents can help their children at home; what the math program is all about.
I eventually googled “Scarsdale” and “Japanese” and found an article from 1991 called “The Japanning of Scarsdale.” The article discussed the tensions between the cultures that the parents had described to me; I could see why they were alarmed. Problems ranged from mean ethnic graffiti in the bathrooms to parents being rebuffed and ignored by neighbors. Subsequent posts, though, showed that since the article was published, the community has gone to great lengths to alleviate the friction.
At the end of our last meeting, I asked the families what else they wanted to learn in preparation for future meetings. One father from Israel came up to me afterward and said, “I’d like to understand the Super Bowl.” I laughed and told him we could arrange that.
I didn’t tell him that March Madness lies ahead.
Connie Schraft is the PS 89 parent coordinator. For questions and comments, write to connie@tribecatrib.com.