James the German

09/20/2011 at 8:33 pm · Filed under Orphan Home and tagged: education, English, Nepal, school

Quite a funny story came our way today from the children about some humorous happenings at school. Apparently, James, one of our youngest, enjoys very much to speak what little English he knows all the time around school to everyone, including teachers and older children. Now you should know, James is 6 years old and is in class LKG (the classes here go Nursery, LKG, UKG, then 1st grade), so no other child in his class speaks much English except to repeat the teacher, but here is James going around speaking English everywhere. Well, it so happens that the teacher of younger classes usually are the weakest in English, because it is not required of them to speak much English. That is how it came to be that James’ own teacher approached one of our older children and asked if James grew up in a foreign country somewhere because he speaks English so much. Can I stress again that James is 6 years old and in the second lowest class in the Nepali education system? And that he spoke basically no English before coming to stay with us? Well, needless to say, James has become class leader and is scheduled to sing an English song at the upcoming school performance for the big festival Dashain. And one last bit of humor from this whole story: after James heard that his teacher asked his brother if he grew up in a foreign country, if you ask James where he is from, he will happily reply “I am from Germany”.

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