Reading Across Cultures

Hands are waving in the air. Some of them are holding books. At the end of our independent reading time, I’ve asked 6th and 7th graders to get out their world map and consider what countries they are learning about or have learned about by reading books set there.

I see books from Korea (When My Name Was Keoko), Pakistan (Amal Unbound), and Japan (The Last Cherry Blossom).

“What about that book we read last year—A Long Walk to Water?” a 7th grader volunteers.

“Oh! I read one about a refugee, too!” a 6th grader chimes in.

I know the one he’s talking about: “Right—you read When Stars Are Scattered.” I draw in a couple of the 7th graders who read it last year. “The author is from Somalia,” I trace the outline on the world map projected on the whiteboard, “and spent time in a refugee camp in Kenya.” More tracing.

“And then he went to America!” a student adds.

Students bend over their maps to add countries. We’d started by locating the countries we’d read pieces from: India and Indonesia. Then we added the places class members had lived: Japan (where our school is located), the US, Peru, Thailand, New Zealand, Vietnam, Hong Kong, the UK, and Austria.

One of our school goals is for students to collaborate with people from different cultures. As an international school, we contain a variety of cultures already. As a Christian school, we believe that all of those cultures display the diversity of ways that people, God’s image bearers and our neighbors who we are to love, have developed the potentials of creation. My hope is that students will use their learning to be part of restoring the flourishing shalom that is God’s goal for creation. One important way my English class does this is through the books I engage students in reading. I can’t take students to Pakistan, Vietnam, South Korea, South Sudan. But I can provide novels that will take them there.

This past week, I read the newspaper headline, “Survey shows only 17% in South Korea and 20% in Japan like each other” (The Japan Times, 26 May 2021). I’m guessing Jesus as well as the Samaritan in his parable about neighbor love and God’s requirements would be in that 17 or 20%. How can I help my students join them there? In part, by the books we read.