My son met a Ukrainian girl over the summer, and after telling me it was a summer fling because she barely speaks English, he started learning Russian and seeing her all the time. The relationship became a race – could she learn English before he learned Russian. Her school is in an enclave of all Russian and Ukrainian kids who escaped the war, so she is not learning English as fast as you’d expect.
Actively integrate various types of information.
She told him he should be in high school instead of homeschooling. I didn’t say to her, “The only reason he learned Russian in six months is because he doesn’t go to school.”
I agreed to be her “experiential learning mentor” and signed on a dotted line that she’s my intern. My son warned me not to interrupt and talk over her: “She’s not your coaching client!”
The internship became me listening to her stories. Her city was one of the first to be bombed by Russia and in one day all but one of her friends died. She was one of the only Ukrainians able to take a train to Poland: only women with children so someone gave her a child to hold.
Repeat back to the person what they say. In their words, not yours.
Of course I try to squash my penchant for confrontation and just listen. But we talk for hours and one day I point out that the she always says “I’m European.” But the only people in the world who say that are Ukrainian. Europeans identify themselves by their country.
The girlfriend says Ukrainians have “a different sense of their own country” because they define themselves only in terms of not Russia. She said the train was stuck for more than a day because the tracks were blown up, but almost no one talked because they didn’t want to speak Russian but most didn’t know Ukrainian.
While the person is talking do not rehearse what you’ll say next.
While she is studying for finals, my son signs up for extra sessions with the Russian tutor. The Russian tutor teaches my son the word borscht and says, “Do you know that word?”
My son says, “Yes! I’ve had borscht. It’s a Ukrainian beet soup.”
The tutor says, “No. It’s a Russian soup.”
My son laughs. I do not tell him to get a new tutor.
While the girlfriend does homework all weekend, my son finds a Russian book that teaches odd grammar by way of propaganda posters. The girlfriend tells him to get a regular grammar book. I do not say the book is genius.
Make time and space that is free of distractions.
I make tea and the girlfriend and I sit at the kitchen table. She tells me that Poland did not want Ukrainians to stay unless they were willing to do the job Polish people cannot: talk to old people in nursing homes who only speak Russian. The girlfriend went to Latvia to go to school but the school would not let her speak Russian. She didn’t know Latvian so at the end of each lesson she’d ask a kid next to her to write down the homework. At home she used google to translate the Latvian to Russian so she could do the homework, then she’d translate her Russian back to Latvian and turn in the homework. She got straight A’s.
Convey interest and comprehension so they’ll continue sharing information.
My son cooks her meals to quell her anxiety that he is not learning enough as a homeschooler. She does her homework in bed and he finds things to do so he can be next to her. He finds etymonline.com. He tells her boyfriend and girlfriend were not widely used until the 1990s. It’s hard to charm her with language: in her mind the five languages she speaks are souvenirs of war.
While she’s in school he shows me slopes of word usage to see how words are invented. We find that the word dad didn’t get real traction until millenniels.
I tell him girlfriend and boyfriend are probably the result of gen x not being parented. And dad is a result of parents spending more time with kids.
My son tells me we don’t have to turn everything into me giving a lesson. Which brings us back to the girlfriend.
They break up before spring break. I tell myself it was a good experience for him to see how much time kids waste in school.
He tells me, “It was a good experience because I got to see you try hard to be a good listener.”
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