Week 5 : Cultural Practices - Emma Shreve

The Group at the Big Pig

Immigrant children almost always have a different educational experience than a typical American student does. Often an immigrant’s education is focused on learning to read, write, and speak English. For my mentee, Dayana, this is no different. Even after these past few weeks that we’ve spent together, language is still something we struggle with. It is hard for Dayana and I to understand each other even when we are talking about something simple like her homework. I can’t imagine how challenging it is for her to understand her teachers when she has to learn something, and be tested on it, in a language that is not her primary one. Dayana’s educational experience is twice as intensive as an English-speaking student’s. This past week, Dayana brought a book with her. We read a short piece, around five sentences long, about parrots. It was cool to see how well Dayana can read English. She may not recognize words right away, but she can sound it out and figure out what the words are. As we moved through the paragraph, Dayana would recognize words she had just read and would shout it out when she realized what it was. She looked so excited when she stumbled across the repetition and even though it took a while to get through those few sentences, I have to admit I was pretty proud of her. This weekend at the Little Piglet kid’s marathon, I learned more about Dayana’s past. When I asked her about her family and where she came from, I often got very different stories. After talking to her teacher though, I learned that she grew up in an orphanage in Peru. Dayana was born with a cleft palate and that was corrected and has left her with a scar and a slight speech impediment. She was adopted and moved to Cincinnati about a year ago. Her mother is Peruvian and her father is American. Since Dayana is the same ethnicity as her adoptive father, I hope that she will be able to celebrate some of the same traditions that they may have celebrated in the orphanage. I definitely think that going to AMIS gives Dayana an advantage and allows her to connect to other people who may have similar heritages.



One of the walkers with her medal!