Allowing the Children to the Migrants to Speak in Their Mother Tongues Proudly

The methods that American take to teach children from different countries, something we can take from, translated…

Last week, as my youngest stepped off the bus, he had a book in his hand that he’d borrowed from the school library.  I glanced at it, it was, one of the series from Star Wars.  He was totally intrigued with the characters, and had often used his Lego people and acted out the scenes.  Two months ago, his English isn’t good enough that he could read on his own, he’d needed me to read it to him.  And those weird and wacky characters and storyline that’s totally out there, made me bored, I’d secretly prayed that he could learn to read English sooner, but, this day had, come faster, than I had, anticipated.  He’d only started American School just seven weeks ago.  The following weekend, we went to the libraries, and he’d just, gone straight to grab the Star Wars series from the children’s section, and he couldn’t put it down on the ride back home.  He’d even ask me to communicate with his homeroom teacher, to STOP making him read those way too easy books.

Compared to his older brother, he’s a slower learner.  In Taiwan, when he was in the third grade, as everybody else in his class entered into English singing competitions, he’s among the handful who were singled out by the instructor.  And because of this, I’d notified his American teachers and English Learning instructor about how he’d learned, and how passive he was in learning.  The homeroom instructor had, set up two activities to make my son’s language abilities shine through, had the classmates go to my son to teach them to write their names in Chinese, so he could, hone up on his interaction skills with the rest of the classmates too.  The EL instructor told me, “Learning slow doesn’t mean he can’t learn.”  She was, a Russian immigrant, worked so very hard, to get certified as a teacher in the U.S., she’s gentle and persistent.  The very first week that classes started, she’d introduced my son to the rest of the class, and stressed, thatalthough he may need the extra help on his English skills, but, hisChinese skills are, BETTER than all the rest of the classmates’English skills combined.

an adult ESL class, photo from online…

I’d often thought, that there are, so many children of migratedparents, and, would they NOT like to show off their mother tongues in school like Vietnamese, or Indonesian?  If this child is like my son—a slow-to-learn kind of child, how would our school treat him?  The American way was: my son has three English emphasis sessions a day, and the instructor documented his progresses in learning clearly, I’d often received his instructor’s text messages, telling me my son’s progresses, as well as his homework assignments.  My son was actually, the only beginner student in her class, and, in his homeroom, whenever there’re activities, the homeroom teacher wouldn’t overlook him either.

In his music class, he’d sung along with the rest of the class for a month, then he learned, what the title of the song they’d been singing was; in P.E., they played football, he’d run with the other students, trying to get the football, he had a nosebleed too, from getting rammed into, and his classmate accompanied him to the nurse’s office, his classmate saw that he was flipping through a novel about a survivor that everybody is interested in, had him read aloud to everybody around, then, given him praises on a job well-done, which made him more willing, to accept the challenges that came his way.

going to all the other regular classes with their peers, only English and reading in the special class sessions, photo from online…

Allowing the children to gain their own dignities in a new environment as they learn, plus how the school put in more than enough resources to help these students with special needs, any child, can success in the academics.

So, this, is what’s so amazing about the American education systems, like those ESL programs, for us, who didn’t speak English first, we were taken out of the classes for the regular English courses, and received the needed help in the ESL classes, and we would, share those P.E. classes, music AND art classes, with the regular classmates, but unfortunates, here in Taiwan, if you needed the extra help, you’d be “labeled” as not good enough or weird, as there’s still taboos, surrounding those who needed the extra help in Taiwan.