Culture Shock

Today I encountered culture shock in my own classroom. I got a new student from Japan. Now you might be thinking "from Japan" in the sense of just a new student. No, I mean JUST from Japan. She got here a week ago last Saturday. As you may have guessed, she speaks VERY little English. The only thing I heard her say in English all day was "Thank you" and "Excuse me".

Lucky for me, I have two other Japanese students in my classroom who are now close to fluent in English. One of them is a girl and the other a boy. They are both very helpful!

Here are a few of the cute interactions from my students today.

• The "old" Japanese girl did not want to translate for me so she told the boy beside her, "Can't you learn Japanese? You would be good at it!"
• Some of the girls in my class decided that they wanted to speak to the new student so they began looking for Japanese language books during library time. (They found one and had to dispute who would get to check it out.)
• The new student understood the math lesson after 2 examples of me working one-on-one with her. Only 25% of the rest of my class understood after an entire page of practice.
• The Japanese boy in my class rides the same bus as the new student. I asked him to show her to the bus at the end of the day. After some reluctance, he said he would. After the bell rang I saw him about 10 feet ahead of her going toward the bus. She was practically sprinting to keep up. I think they made it...

Overall I'm really excited about this new challenge. However I also find myself scared because I have never had a student that knew no English at all! And I keep wishing that she spoke Spanish. I can do Spanish a little more than Japanese.