Like many of the pupils here, one of our new boys who started this term, speaks virtually no English. It’s fairly normal here, but always presents an extra challenge in the never-ending quest for perfection. When I say virtually, I’m not exaggerating; the best Samir’s managed so far is a very earnest: “Yes.” Despite numerous hours of work with him, his English has not improved at all, and of course he’s not making any friends – apart from a disastrous attempt to ‘bond’ with one of the other boys in the class when Samir sat on the boy’s desk and started frantically raising his eyebrows and blinking. As you can imagine, it only served to further alienate him. Kids can indeed be cruel.

However his parents came in for parents evening last night, and I thought that finally I’d be able to make sense of everything, and discuss him getting some extra help. It started well, Mr Samir smiled, shook my hand and said: “Hello, we are pleased to meet Samir’s teacher, thank you.” I smiled and started chatting about Samir. He nodded, as did his wife, and they both agreed with what I was saying. In fact after ten minutes of me speaking, and them offering periodic ‘yes’ responses I began to experience some rather unnerving déjà vu. I changed tack, asking them what they thought Samir needed more help with. My heart sank when Mr Samir smiled and said: “Yes.” His wife nodded frantically and added: “Yes.” Suddenly it became clear why Samir wasn’t learning any English. If he’s not speaking it at home how on earth is he ever going to learn it here?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009 at 4:12 am and is filed under Parents, Pupils. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.