International Students

“When I first came to Vancouver, the first two years I cried a lot because, like, most of my friends and dad are in Hong Kong”-Katie. Reading The struggles of affluent East Asian youth in Canada, really made me think of the students at Luther College High School in the dorms that I work with. Parents from different countries send their kids to Canada to learn English and to get a good education; but it can be very traumatic and stressful for young teenagers to live on their own. When students who are just starting Grade. 9 move into the dorms at Luther, they are very scared and timid. They do not know a lot of English and know no one here in Regina. It takes them a very long time to not only get comfortable speaking a new language, but living somewhere new as well. Putting myself in their position, I can’t imagine the anxiety I would feel being alone in a new country at the age of 14. Majority of the students in the dorms here are from China, and there’s a lot of pressure from their parents to do well academically. I often hear from the students that they do not feel like they are good enough. It is very common for the students here to get homesick and want to go home. Being a residential assistant, I try to comfort them the best I can. At Luther, we have counsellors and tutors that they can communicate with in their own language. By having this, it dramatically makes a difference for them and they do not feel pressured to always have to speak English. When the students are feeling low, they notice when others put in effort to try and make them feel more at home and it makes a huge difference for them. For example, there was a girl in the dorms that was very homesick and she really missed her dogs. So the next day, I decided to bring my dogs to the dorms so the students could play with them. As soon as she saw my two dogs, she had a huge smile on her face. Oftentimes, when students are missing their classes or aren’t passing, their mind is distracted from something else. As a future teacher, I think it is so important to pay attention to your students emotional state.