A Global Community in the Classrooms of a Small Watertown Nursery School

Watertown is known for its Armenian, Italian and Greek populations, but people from a growing number of countries call the town home. This change is perhaps most apparent in schools where classrooms are full of diversity.

At the , six different languages including Korean, Malayalam and Tamil are spoken in one classroom alone.

This poses a challenge for teachers like Mary Gilfoyle who says she loves working with the students who are learning English and tries to connect with them on a different level.

“You open your heart and use your intuition to connect with them. It’s all about building that connection,” Gilfoyle said.

Director Margaret Clermont has been at the school for 23 years, and said the change has been quite recent.

“There was a time about 4 years ago when we weren’t multicultural. Then we got a diverse family, and they brought friends and since then diversity has just increased," Clermont said. "This year we have our record number of students from different countries. I really think it’s also got to do with the population of Watertown changing too.”

At the beginning of the year teachers asked the parents to write down basic words in all the languages. They have basic greetings and questions posted around the classroom and this has been helping them communicate with the children.

Heather Seymour says her students have made a lot of progress in English since they started in September.

“Kids have the capacity to learn it so much faster than adults. They start in September with none and by January they just bloom," Seymour said. "It really makes a difference if parents speak English at home but we encourage them to speak their first language at home because we don’t want the kids to lose their first language. It’s just really important to keep it.”

Communication is not only a challenge for the teachers, but for the children as well.

“Some kids won’t talk at all, they won’t use their home language either. They just take it all in," Gilfoyle said. "Some do have a much more outgoing personality and they have an easier time playing and not speaking English. Others want to just watch first.”

Seymour adds that the other students are helping out their bilingual friends, taking them under their wing.

“To them it’s like being a big sister [or big brother],” she said.

Seymour says teachers organize a lot of hands-on activities.

“With circle time, story time we try to do a lot of hands-on things and visual things," Seymour said. "This challenges the English speakers while everyone else is still engaged. Songs are also really important. They come first because we find that it’s easier to sing in another language than it is to talk.”

The school is split into two classrooms by age group. The older children are in the Yellow Room, and the younger ones in the Purple Room.

“The kids seem to be able to communicate in their own language when they don’t have a common language, but you would be so amazed," Clermont said. "After a year they can communicate very well so we don’t have a communication problem once they’re in the Yellow Room.”

Next month, the school will host its second annual International Night. Clermont says last year families brought native dishes and the dinner event was a huge success. Once again this year the school will continue to celebrate the diversity in the classroom and within the community.