My Name is Yoon
By Helen Recovits
America is the land of immigrants and this needs to be celebrated and remembered.
This week I read a wonderful story about a young girl from the country of Korea moves to America and absolutely hates it. She is feeling very lonely and missing her home. She does not like the traditions in America and is having a very hard time adjusting to America. Her father tells her that she has to learn to write her name in English. However, she hates it because she feels it is just lines and circles not beautiful characters like her name in Korean. She must go to school and struggles with writing her name so instead she chooses to write her name as cat and cupcake and everyday the teacher jsut accepts her and waits patiently until she is ready to write her name. One day Yoon decides to actually write her name and the teacher is ecstatic!
I thought this book was a great read and I think it would be a great book to read to children that are struggling with moving to a new country, new state, new city, or even a new school. It is a very hard change to make for many students and even adults. The reason I like this book is because the teacher was patient with Yoon and waited for her to relax and settle into her new surroundings. I feel a lot of teachers do not do this for children and force them to try and change before they are ready. This would also be a great book to introduce to children some cultures around the world and their language, Korean! Super great book and I would read this book to my students on the first day of school or if I was working in a school where a lot of immigrants were living.
America is so diverse it is nice to have literature to support our growing differences. This book would allow children to understand that people are different, but you can still have the same emotions. I like how you viewed it from a teacher's perspective, and this is something we all as teachers might face in the future.
ReplyDeleteThis sounds like a really great story! I agree I think too many teachers push a child to change before they are ready. I think both teachers and students could learn something about patience from this book. I like how you said you would read it to your class on the first day, since you're all in a new and kind of scary environment. Good post!
ReplyDelete