Introduction by John Myers
My name is John Myers, and I am the ELL teacher here at Friends Select School. I’ve been teaching English as a Second Language for more than 20 years, so I guess you could say I’m an expert in what I do. Students who come here from other countries face unique issues that aren’t always obvious to us when we interact with them at school. Learning English can take a long time for many, and learning the culture can be even more daunting. It is for these reasons that I approached the editors of The Falcon to ask that the ELL students contribute these pieces, so that we all can learn a little more about their unique experiences coming to school here at FSS.
A Vietnamese Student Navigates Friends Select
My name is Duc, and I am a senior at Friends-Select. I came to the United States from Vietnam four years ago. During my first two years in the United States, I studied at Perkiomen School in Pennsburg, Pennsylvania. There, I lived in a dorm with my friends, and I had to do everything by myself, like laundry. It was very different from any situation I had ever been a part of. After two years at Perkiomen, I moved to Philadelphia to live with my family. That was when I came to Friends Select School. We moved to Philadelphia because my sister was going to Drexel, and my parents wanted me to live nearby.
The schools I attended here are not that different from the school I went to in Vietnam, except that we spoke Vietnamese there. I first started learning English in the first grade, but as you can imagine, learning English there is very different from learning English here. It’s kind of like when we take another language here, but we don’t really become fluent. That was me when I came here. I knew some vocabulary and rules about English, but I wasn’t very fluent.
In my first year at Friends Select, I was the only Vietnamese student, and so it was really hard for me to find friends. I think if there had been one or two other Vietnamese students, it would have been much better because it would have been easier to make friends with them. I also think that my academic grades would have been better because I would have been able to ask them whatever I didn’t know, and we could have helped each other in our first language. Being able to speak more Vietnamese would be easier than having to rely only on English, because it’s still hard for me to understand everything, especially in my classes.
Sometimes it’s even hard to ask my teacher questions. Normally, I would email them questions instead of asking them in person because talking with them was harder. Many times, the teacher didn’t really understand that I was asking the question because I truly didn’t understand something, and they would often just tell me that I needed to just do the work. It still turned out well for me because I have an ELL teacher named John Myers. He has been helping me with all the stuff that I don’t understand.
The two most difficult classes that I took here were Spanish and English. The level of language in English class is very difficult for me, because there are so many vocabulary words I don’t understand. As for Spanish, well, it’s my third language, and the alphabet is more similar to English and completely different from the Vietnamese alphabet. So that’s why it took me so long to understand how Spanish works, and I still struggle with it.
Looking back at Friends Select brings up a lot of feelings for me. It’s been hard to make friends here, but I found that the best way to do that is to do activities after school. For me, that was especially true with joining the golf team. That is the one thing that I have had the most fun doing during my time here, mostly because it allowed me the best opportunity to make new friends.
In the past two years, I have had a lot of fun experiences, fun classes, and good teachers. All of these factors have allowed me to become a better person who is more willing to try new things in the future. Being at Friends Select every day was difficult, but I made it through. I have been lucky because I have had the chance to study in a fantastic academic environment, and I learned some more English. Thank you, Friends Select School!
