Two pairs of siblings are socializing among their peers in a small classroom at Community Middle School during a minicamp organized by the Plainsboro Recreation Department. But both are there for different reasons.##M:[more]##
Siblings Yuta and Remika Yamamoto are noticeably having difficulty in finding adjectives in English to describe the weather in their native country, Japan.
Meanwhile, the other pair — Samyuktha and Chaitanya Natarajan, born in New Jersey and raised in Plainsboro — may be native English speakers, but they are familiar with the plight of learning a second language, specifically one that is a part of their familial culture and home life, and are there to help the Yamamoto siblings adapt.
“My house is kind of big; it’s so enormous,” said Yuta Yamamoto, shyly looking to the Natarajan siblings for approval of his spoken English. “It’s so huge.” Yamamoto was describing one of the major differences he noticed after arriving at his new home in Canal Pointe in West Windsor. His family had moved from Osaka, Japan, five years ago, and he noted the drastic change from the compact and heavily populated city, the largest in his native country.
As the Natarajan siblings smiled and looked on as he spoke, Yamamoto, whose sister Remika listened quietly at his side, continued. What was the next difference he noticed? “America has freedom,” he said. “I get to play games.”
Both pairs of the siblings giggled about his comment, while the rest of their peers were spread around the classroom earlier this month, working on worksheets comparing and contrasting their native countries’ climates and unique characteristics.
The interaction between the pairs of siblings had mirrored the atmosphere in the classroom all morning. West Windsor-Plainsboro’s own born and raised, already an ethnically diverse group, were volunteering to interact with their peers who had come to America from all corners of the globe. They hope to help their non-native peers transition to American life, where the biggest challenge is learning its language.
The program, which brings community volunteers into the classroom with students in the West Windsor-Plainsboro school district’s English as a Second Language classes, is funded entirely by Bristol-Meyers Squibb. The class is a collaborative effort with the school district, says Cindy Capritti, program coordinator for the Plainsboro Recreation Department.
The program is an evolution of the “America: New Home” program that Plainsboro initiated in 2004, after a resident had asked the recreation department to organize a program to serve the immigrant population. Initially, the program focused on senior citizens, with the goal of addressing the isolation they felt as they moved here from their native countries. “We were hoping to offer English as a Second Language classes to them to help them become better integrated into the community,” Capritti said. “They would have an easier time adjusting to the culture and just the day-to-day of living here.”
This past year, the program evolved to focus more on working adults. “What we found is that among the seniors, while it’s a great opportunity for them to acquire some new skills, it’s very difficult to do at that age, and there were some things that were hampering their ability to participate, most notably, transportation,” Capritti added. “The other thing is that the seniors were shielded in a way by the fact that they live with their families. They have a support mechanism in place to help them with the day-to-day living.”
While the program was underway for the seniors, officials at the recreation department were receiving inquiries from adults about the ESL program, so they decided to open it up to them, Capritti said. Now it has evolved into a program mostly for adults. “They are more independent and have an even greater need for English language skills because they’re in the working world,” Capritti said.
While serving both the senior and adult immigrant populations in the township, officials also considered serving children. The ESL minicamp program was initiated last summer as a pilot program, then only running for two weeks. It was expanded this summer into a four-week program throughout the month of July, held Monday through Thursday from 9 a.m. to noon, she said.
“The reason for doing this minicamp is that the kids who are enrolled in the ESL program during the normal school year are losing some of their skills during the summer,” Capritti explained. “This was an attempt to try to bridge that gap from June to September to keep their skills up. It also allows them to socialize.”
The program is structured so that native English-speaking children are teaching in the program as volunteers. “It’s a camp setting, so it’s fun, but it’s very focused on English language skill development,” Capritti says.
For the Natarajan siblings, who are volunteers at the camp, picking up what they can about their parents’ native language at home can be a challenge, especially when it comes to learning it quickly.
“It’s difficult for me to understand it and learn it quickly,” said Samyuktha Natarajan, who will be a junior at High School North next year. “So we kind of know where they’re coming from,” added her brother, who will be an eighth grader at Community Middle next year.
The pair moved to a residential development behind High School North in Plainsboro from South Orange years ago, during their early childhood, simply because their parents heard about the school district at West Windsor-Plainsboro. Their father works for Cisco, and their mother works in the information technology department at Columbia University.
Samyuktha said she heard about the opportunity to volunteer here from her volunteer efforts with Earth Hour and with Shadow Bunnies, a Plainsboro Recreation program that teaches martial arts to children with disabilities. “I really wanted to volunteer, and I didn’t want to stop over the summer,” she explained.
She found the ESL minicamp, and “I thought it was pretty cool to teach kids English,” she added. Her brother followed suit, saying he also wanted to get involved and saw that his sister was going to get involved.
Into the second week of camp, they say they have noticed a big difference, particularly in their non-native-speaking peers’ confidence levels. “When we’re working one-on-one, they were nervous,” Samyuktha says. “Now they’re opening up, and we’re friends.”
“Now they come up to you and ask how your weekend was,” Chaitanya added.
Both say the minicamp, during which teacher Yuko Kravis prints out lyrics to popular songs for student analysis, brings all the students and volunteers together because they can all relate to the common experience of American culture.
Kravis agrees. “They’ve bonded well, and the volunteers really play a crucial role in the camp,” she says. “They’re not only helping them as volunteers, but as friends.”
Before coming to the WW-P district, Kravis taught in Fort Lee and Patterson and had experience in teaching at William Patterson College. Now at Dutch Neck, she teaches first through fifth graders. The middle school age group at the minicamp, which caters to students ages 11 through 14, is new to her.
Although she did not plan it this way, letting the volunteers and students mingle has given the students a chance to improve and open up in ways that are not possible during the academic year, when teachers must follow a rigorous academic curriculum, Kravis explains.
“It’s a different approach from the regular classroom,” says Kravis, who has been with the district for five years now. “Teaching English through pop music is more versatile. It’s fun, yet very focused on learning. Everyone can join the discussion.”
Some examples of the music analyzed in class? “Let it Be” by the Beatles, “Scary Story” by Will Smith, and Queen’s “We Are the Champions” and “We Will Rock You.”
“Even from music, I can refer to rhymes, metaphors, and the biographies of the writers, and this can relate to academics,” Kravis says. “I want them to have that kind of flexibility in their minds.”
What also takes the pressure off the students is that they will not be graded on what they learn in the minicamp, and there are no tests. This way the students can gain a cultural perspective from the volunteers and also gain some confidence, Kravis says.
During one classroom discussion about climate earlier this month, Yuta Yamamoto gathered the courage to ask one of his classmates about the monsoon season in India. “If the temperature gets too hot, do some people die? Is there a danger?”
Jokingly, his classmate, whose family is from India, responded that there would be more of a danger in being a pedestrian in traffic than there would be as a result of getting stuck in the heat. “The traffic there is uncontrolled,” he said. A little while later, Remika also gathered enough confidence to describe in front of the class that the humidity of New Jersey’s summer heat is “sweaty.”
Yuta and Remika Yamamoto, who came with their family to America from Japan because of their father’s work for a medical company, say they have gained confidence from the program.
Yuta first attended Millstone River and Grover Middle School and will be a freshman at High School South next year. His sister attended Dutch Neck and Village schools and will head to Grover next year.
In school, Yuta says his favorite subjects have been physical education and math, while Remika says she likes math and art.
Yuta, however, says he is still learning English and that “it’s hard to learn English with accents and pronunciations.”
“I’m kind of nervous,” Yuta says. “If someone asks me where is this place, I can’t answer it.” At camp, though, “I get to learn vocabulary and grammar, and I get to talk to the volunteers. They helped me a lot.”
