From a Town on the Hudson by Yuko Koyano Read Free Book Online Page A

In the 1985-86 school year when my sons transferred to the public schools, Fort Lee had 407 Japanese pupils out a total enrollment of 2,476 students from kindergarten to twelfth grade. * Some of them were newcomers.
    It was easy to imagine that most American homeroom teachers might have had mixed feelings toward the many pupils who weren't able to respond to the teachers' questions immediately. Our younger son's class usually had four Japanese children in a class of twenty every year. In Japan, however, few foreign families had lived outside of Tokyo before our family left there in 1985. If Japan's public schools had as many foreign pupils as the American schools did, it would throw the Japanese homeroom teachers into a flurry. So far as I saw in the American schools our sons went to, however, no teacher showed any sign of confusion, no classmate looked at the foreign children with curious eyes, and no school staff members discriminated against the shy children. I came to understand that this was because of the Fort Lee Board of Education's practical overall program for welcoming children from other countries. The E.S.L. class and the bilingual class were provided to help students fit into the American schools by teaching them English step by step. Until our sons passed the classes, the teachers eased their difficulties and always seemed to make an effort to fill the cultural gap between the United States and other countries. As a foreign mother, I couldn't thank them enough for their thoughtfulness.
    Until the language problem of the foreign children could be solved, many of their families must have struggled. I, too, was always anxious about our two sons and the stress they felt in their schools, so from the bottom of my heart I hoped and waited for the day they would be able to understand English. I am not a Christian, but what came readily to my mind then was a phrase from the Bible, "In the beginning was the Word." * For our family, The Day came first to our younger son, a fourth-grader then. One evening after he had spent a year and a half in School #3, he was hanging around me in the kitchen and suddenly loudly said, "I wondered why I was feeling happy all day today and I realized the reason now. Mother, I could understand everything that was said in English at school!" A few months later, our older son, a high school student then, said coolly, "It took a long time." Then they were finished with the E.S.L. and bilingual classes and could join the regular curriculum.
    Since our sons had become familiar with English, they began to relax. In their schools they sometimes helped newcomers from Japan as they had been helped in the beginning. They also invited American friends to our home. They enjoyed summer camps and acquired the habit of listening to American music. Our older son started to watch MTV before supper and bought records by Bon Jovi and Don Johnson. Our younger son enjoyed attending his classmates many birthday parties which were held at their homes, a roller-skating rink, or movie theaters. He also had great fun having water-fights with his classmates. Both sons once attended the opening ceremony for Fort Lee's Constitution Park wearing the same "Just Say NO" T -shirt as all the other schoolchildren.
    Around the time when our family had spent four years in the United States, I noticed that our sons came to insist on their own opinions. To express themselves, they used gestures that American boys used, as well. In 1989, the fifth summer of our sojourn in Fort Lee, our younger son, who was enjoying summer camp, said, "Mother, if our family stays in the United States forever, it will be all right with me." They seemed to have forgotten that they had struggled with English in the beginning.
    In 1990, when we returned home to Japan, I saw the Stars and Stripes on the wall over the desk of our older son who had gotten back home a year earlier. I was keenly aware that our sons had been a part of American society and