Personal Experience: How We’ve Chosen a School for a Russian-Speaking Child in San Francisco

After moving to the USA, we settled in San Francisco. Despite the use of English outside the home, Russian was always spoken in our family in everyday life — we are trying not to lose touch with our native culture. Therefore, when we had children, the decision to send them to a Russian kindergarten or preschool with the Russian language classes was obvious.

Photo by the author

However it turned out to be not easy. While exploring options for such institutions for children, we faced several problems. Some schools were focused only on learning the language, which made it impossible for the child to develop in other important fields. Some institutions prepared children in several subjects but did not offer cultural events at all, but we wanted the child to embrace our native culture and try a part of our childhood.

After a long and difficult search, we finally got lucky. At Shalom School in San Francisco, we found everything we were looking for. At this school, there are not only Russian language lessons, but also Hebrew lessons. And also — the most important — the atmosphere that immediately tells your child: you are at home, in the family.

With parental care, the school approached the protection of students from the coronavirus. The administration of the institution strictly follows all the instructions of the medical authorities on social distancing and personal protection for both children and staff. At the same time, the school managed to preserve the family atmosphere that was created there earlier.

School teachers strive to create a warm, trusting, and comfortable atmosphere, and with the help of stories and fairy tales, understandable to children, they introduce them not only to the Russian language but also to the culture. Every day children read poems, sing songs, learn to respectfully communicate with each other. The curriculum includes science, mathematics, languages (Russian, English, Hebrew), as well as creative art lessons aimed at kids’ self-expression through drawing with paints, playing musical instruments, listening to classical music, sculpting, and making crafts with their own hands.

Photo by the author

At Shalom School, children form their speech through listening and repeating words, learn to express thoughts in sentences, retell stories, and constantly expand their vocabulary. One teacher works with 6-8 children at school, which allows him to pay enough attention to each child. Besides, individual work is carried out with children daily.

One of the key aspects of healthy communication is the ability to manage your emotions, to identify the emotions of the people around you, and to respond to them correctly. Therefore, Emotional Intelligence learning is studied at school: children are taught to cooperate, respect the feelings of others their privacy and personal space, build friendly relations with each other and respect teachers.

Before the pandemic, the school organized excursions to fire departments, police stations, grocery stores, museums, parks, nursing homes, playgrounds, and gardens. Students could see and learn a lot in those places. Now, due to the pandemic, these opportunities are limited but will be resumed as soon as the epidemiological situation improves.

Also, Shalom School has a tradition of holding matinees. As bright and merry as we remember them from our childhood. Since matinees are part of the culture in which we grew up, we wanted to keep this tradition in our family. Shalom School manages to make these events a real fairy tale for children and friendly get-together event for parents. Now these festivities have also had to be changed due to the epidemiological challenges. However, I am sure that after the situation improves, these wonderful events, which we greatly miss, will return again.

Infographics by Shalom School

From the first day, our child goes to Shalom School with pleasure, learns languages, gets to know his native culture, and views the rare need to skip classes as punishment, not a reword (and this is the best appreciation of the great work that teachers do).

We, as parents, have a wonderful opportunity to communicate with the moms and dads of his classmates at various events and make new friends among Russian-speaking immigrants.

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