Learning in Two Languages

I very vividly remember my first day of first grade. The beige square tiles leading me to my classroom. The bright posters on the wall illustrating strange characters and the distinct sound of little kids’ exited chatter. I settled into my small plastic chair and turned my attention to the teacher. That morning seemed quite like my old school. Soon enough it was lunch time and I skipped cheerfully to the cafeteria, the worries of the weeks before washed away. As I was lining up to go to afternoon class a tall long haired girl tapped me on the shoulder. I turned around and she asked me “do you know Japanese?” I replied with the obvious answer “no”. She looked at me puzzled and ended the conversation with “well I guess your gonna fail”. Confused, I turned away and followed my line up the stairs. My parents had told me a few weeks earlier that I was going to be going to a new school where I would learn Japanese, but I don’t think I ever totally comprehended what that meant before starting. When we reached the hallway to my classroom instead of going to the class I had been to in the morning we went to the one next door. Inside of this classroom a strange alignment of characters were plastered everywhere I looked. A lump started to form in my throat as my teacher showed me to my seat. Then suddenly the teacher started talking in a strange language. Everyone stood up and began to move towards the carpet. Holding back tears I followed them and sat down. The teacher began to point at a calendar, enthusiastically waving her arms around.

Takayama

This was the beginning of my journey learning Japanese through immersion at a public magnet program located in Portland, Oregon. My school was a Preschool through 5th grade school and I started in first grade. Half of our day was spent in Japanese and the other half in English. When I began there I knew no Japanese and neither of my parents have any connection to Japan. When I was in first grade I began to learn the first of three alphabets, hiragana. Followed by katakana in second grade and beginning more seriously with kanji in fourth. In our Japanese class we had one main teacher and one intern who was visiting from Japan. The Japanese teachers only spoke to us in Japanese so we learned grammar and new words not through memorization, but through listening and using. Because it was immersion we also did half of our work in Japanese. In addition to actual lessons about Japanese we were learning math, history, and science in Japanese as well. Doing “normal” work in Japanese meant we were able to diversify what we were speaking about and made it more relatable to the real world.

Probably the most difficult part of going to this school was that I had no help from my parents at home for my Japanese work. If I didn't know how to do my homework I had to find someone who did

The school I visited in Japan 

or ask the teacher because my parents had no idea what was going on. I think this is a very valuable skill that my school had us learn at a very young age.

After five years of hard work every class ends there time at my school by going on a two week trip to Japan. All of fifth grade we study, fundraise, and practice for this trip. We get to stay in homestays, go to school, visit many historical places, and surprisingly many people's favorite, soak in onsens. While in Japan our class visited a tiny mountain top village and learned how to make a traditional Japanese instrument, ate mochi, and made our own paper. (that villages specialty) We also visited a town called Takayama which was my favorite place on the trip and I highly recommend. It was really amazing to be able to realize how much Japanese I really knew. Especially in my homestay, I was surprised by how fluently I could speak. One of my favorite parts of the trip was when we would walk into a small shop or restaurant and start speaking in Japanese. Everyone in the store would light up and be super excited and it was really cool to see all these people amazed that a bunch of American kids knew their language.

This school was a huge part of my life and got me started on my interest of other places and cultures. Even though I no longer attend a school that teaches Japanese I still take lessons every week so that I never forget what I worked so hard to learn. I think that learning a language at a young age so intensively was an amazing experience that I wish more kids in the US got to experience. Overall I hope that one day people will realize how important it is that kids feel connected to the world and open even more school like the one I went to.

If you want to see a video about the school I went to this is a link to one. It’s a bit old, but I think it shows what an amazing place it is.

Photo Credit: Takayama Photo     School Photo