Speaking their Language: the Key to Children’s Comfort in Educational Spaces

For me, this was a year of transitions. I left home to complete my high school education at boarding school, miles away in Massachusetts. Living away from home for months at a time was a daunting task but the hardest part of adjusting to life at school was not quite being able to speak the language of East Coast academics. However, I returned home for the summer to join the workforce as a summer camp counselor at Roeper Summer Programs. It was from the Roeper School that I had transitioned to boarding school. Although I was returning as a teacher rather than a student, it remained a homecoming in many ways.

As a child, Roeper’s values became my values. Their educational model focuses onindependence, freedom and primarily, a love of children. Through my work as a counselor, I grew to appreciate the way children communicate and learn, in the same way Roeper had taught me.

From my first day, the way language and culture were utilized by the children in our class captivated me. For example, several of our students were Chinese-Americans and had gone to the same preschool. Therefore, these children, aged between three and four, would often communicate with each other in Mandarin, even calling each other by their Chinese names rather than the ones we had been told to call them. When speaking with other students or their counselors, they would revert to English, effectively codeswitching. Once, I accidentally called one child by her Chinese name. She looked at me quizzically, as if she wasn’t sure how to react when someone outside her Chinese community called her by her Chinese name. Eventually, she just laughed and replied “My name is Lily,” and ran off. I was immediately interested in the way these Chinese-American children, who also happened to be some of the oldest in our group, had enough experience with societal norms, that they felt they had to assimilate when faced with non-Chinese people. It was clear these children could already tell being Chinese-American made them different.

Other children communicated their culture differently. One child, easily the shyest of ours, was overjoyed when I asked him about his Bosnian heritage. In fact, it felt like he opened up more when asked about it, just like a child would typically do about any of their interests. Another child was a mix of the two children. I knew his name had Spanish origins and as a Spanish speaker, I asked him if he spoke Spanish at home. He smiled like I was playing a trick on him, but then he replied “I don’t really speak it, I just know some of the animal names like gato or perro,”.

The child I’ve had the most experience learning from was Olivia. Olivia had been at camp the whole summer, but I began to connect with her on a deeper level when I learned that the way to her heart was her home language of Korean. I noticed she would sometimes chatter in endless Korean happily but unfortunately, no one understood what she was saying. Once when Olivia was crying, I said “Annyeongasayo, Olivia” to try and cheer her up, and she smiled widely, and said “Annyeong!” back to me. Annyeong, meaning hello, was one of the only Korean words I knew at the time. For the rest of the day, Olivia and I were inseparable as she taught me more Korean words. I promised her I would begin learning more Korean for her and the next day, I came back with a couple more words and phrases. Olivia always sleeps during naptime and to wake her, I would often say “Kkaeuda” which is the word for wake up in Korean. I began practicing on Duolingo for at least half an hour everyday and I began to work up more conversational Korean to present to Olivia each day. Most iconically, Olivia would often signal to me to put her on my lap and say “I want Korean,” and I would whip out my phone for us to do a Korean lesson together on Duolingo. She loved the Duolingo bird, but more importantly she loved exercises where there was a picture and she was able to complete them using her own voice and her own Korean.

What I loved most about working with this age group was their lack of judgement. Boarding school made me feel like I had to reinvent myself and constantly keep up with the insanely high standards other students fit. Olivia taught me that it was okay to fail, if only to keep trying, through always softly correcting my Korean when it was wrong and investing herself in improving my skill. She may only be four years old, but she showed a deep maturity and an understanding that my sudden interest in learning the language was because I wanted to connect with her. Olivia taught me that children leaving their parents and the comfort of home, often for the first time, find different methods to make themselves feel comfortable. As educators and caretakers of children, we should always strive to meet the children on their level. If someone at boarding school had been welcoming to who I was, rather than trying to change me, I would be a lot more responsive. When any of my children speak to me using their favorite words or phrases, whether in English or another language, I now always encourage them to deeper understand language as something to share and explore with others.

Going back to boarding school, I’m aiming to stay as true to myself as possible and bring my own language to the community, just as I hope my campers will. After all, connecting with children isn’t about forcing them into a mold, it's about speaking their language.