by Julien Bettencourt
Foreign students wake up every day knowing that when they step foot on school grounds their life will be hard. It’s hard to start a new life in a new country and a new school. It’s even harder to be in a new environment without any friends, and this transition becomes extremely difficult when kids in the school make fun of you because you are different and have a different accent.
In a school where there are 30 foreign students, some of the American students still have a hard time with the fact that these students attend Hudson High and can’t interact with them.
When many foreign students enter the school, the first thing they do is form groups with the kids from the same country or situation. These students fear rejection by American students.
The American students don’t make life easy for the foreign students. Even after four years spent at Hudson High School, senior André Costa still socializes more with students from other countries because of the way he is treated by the American students. The classroom is a scary place as foreign students need to speak for themselves even if they lack confidence. “I am afraid to answer because I will be mocked by the way I speak,” said Costa.
It is hard to start a new life in a new country, and not knowing the language may make the experience even harder for the foreign students. When students arrive at the high school for the first time without being familiar with the English language, “they might feel shy or even concerned about speaking something wrong when asked a question,” ELL teacher Emily Smyth said.
A good way to become part of the school and to make new friends is to “join the sports, clubs and events that the school offers, because it is a good way to integrate in the school if you’re a new student,” Media teacher Scott Darlington said.
One eighth grader sees the benefits of becoming involved in different activities. “It’s been great. I have been playing tennis this year and I will play soccer, basketball and tennis next year also.”
Scott Darlington understands the hard time that the students have here. “One of the main things I have to know is how to work with foreign students and their situations so I can help them in school.” It is not an easy job at all “because the language barrier makes it harder to understand the students but also to help them with their difficulties and needs,” Darlington said.
Some students have been lucky enough to blend in school without being bothered too much.
That is the case of sophomore Yi Zheng who began attending the high school last year. She has only had a few negative interactions with American students. “Americans are very competitive persons, and especially in gym classes they try their best to win but when they lose they would scream and be mean towards me,” said Zheng.
Most foreign students believe that the office doesn’t do anything to help them to become a part of the school. Though the truth is that the office works a lot for them. They need to call the student’s last school which was out of the United States and ask for the student’s grades and even more documents.
The foreign students wish that teachers would create some geography classes to teach students different cultures and the location of the countries where they come from. Many issues between American students and foreign students start “when the Americans say that Portugal is a third world country,” said senior André Costa.
The school did have a program 8 years ago called Friends “which was a program where foreign students and American students would come together and share information about cultures, but they would also have field trips to American, Brazilian, Portuguese, and Spanish restaurants so the kids would try the food,” said World Language teacher Maristella Ibanhez .The program was active for 5 to 6 years. The program ended after most of the teachers retired and the number of foreigner students dropped.
The program was really successful as kids had the opportunity to interact with the American kids and were able to create strong relationships. It wasn’t easy for foreign students to create friendships on the first day; most of them took at least 1 year to become friends and get used to each other.
I am myself a foreign student, and I have experienced and witnessed some issues between foreign and American students. One day my friend had a problem with an American student, and he could not hang out with the group of friends he usually was with just because those friends like the American student more. The problem that my friend had was the fact that he was Portuguese, and because of that the American student did not like him and excluded him from the group.
This is one of the examples of issues that I witness and experienced every day in school. This is an issue that needs to be ended because it affects many foreign students, and these students don’t have an easy life as they are building a new life in a new country.