Mod 3 Discussion: Moving Students Into a New Culture

When I was in my thirties, my wife and I lived in St. Paul, Minnesota, a big-city environment with big-city cultural activities to explore and appreciate, and a big-city sense of excitement and purpose. The Twin Cities area had 50 live theatres performing plays, seven major museums, the Guthrie (the flagship cultural institution of the Midwest), 17 universities and colleges within 5 miles of my home, and cultural festivals of all kinds on each and every weekend of the year. I  was also an emerging writer whose sense of identity was tangled up in living in a big city. When my first book came out in 1997, I gave readings at book stores and coffee shops all over the St. Paul metro area. When my first book became a finalist for the Minnesota Book Award, I was on the radio and became an emerging star in the Twin Cities literary scene. I was even offered a tenure track position at a local college. 

Then my wife was accepted into med school, only one med school, and it was in Hershey, Pennsylvania. Hershey is known for chocolate, of course, and the cows that needed to crate that chocolate. But there are no museums, no cultural institutions (and Hersheypark does not count), no weekly festivals. I was in the middle of a cultural nowhere. I had to drive 40 miles just to find a Kinkos to make copies. Lastly, there was no literary scene, and since the Internet was not yet a real mechanism for keeping in touch with a “community,” no way to maintain the contact with those in the literary community in the Twin Cities. I felt completely cut off from everything that was meaningful to me.  

The only way I was able to gain a foothold in this new community was through my children. My son joined the Cub Scouts, so I became his Den Leader. My daughter started to play the cello and sing, so I took her to the music lessons and the singing lessons and helped organize her recitals. Frankly, it took me ten full years to fully adjust, and I say that because I did not write another book or even attempt one for ten years. My kids became my focus. 
The implications for my or any classroom are significant. Children who arrive from distant shores, other communities or other countries, have left a significant part of their identity behind. They may be feeling cut off from everything that helped to give them a sense of identity and will need to pour their energy into something personal to help them gain an emotional foothold in their new surroundings. (For me that foothold was my children and how they experienced life in Hershey.) My role in this process as their teacher maybe limited, but I can begin helping them by acknowledging how they feel, gauging their personal and extracurricular interests, and helping them brainstorm about to stay and feel connected to life in this new community.