At eight years old, children generally have a firm grasp on the art of reading. Well, assuming you’re reading your own language, that is. SESP freshman Tatiana Rostovtseva should have been enjoying second grade in her hometown of Nizhny Novgorod, Russia when her father accepted a college teaching position at Texas A & M. Since 1996, the blond-haired Learning and Organizational Change major has resided in Bryan, Texas stuck between two very different cultures. PLAY sat down with Rostovtseva, who has no trace of a Russian accent, to talk about the difficulties in moving to a foreign country and using her new opportunities to help others.
PLAY: What was your reaction, at eight years old, being told you were coming to America?
Tatiana Rostovtseva: I was actually the most scared. Everyone else was really excited, but I was nervous. I was going to miss Grandma and Grandpa.
PLAY: How’d you deal with the language barrier?
TR: Well, on the first day of school, which was an unspecified day in March after we came, our dad’s friend dropped us off at the elementary school and (the school officials) said, “Here’s the teacher, here’s the bus stop and here’s the cafeteria.” I didn’t speak a word of English or anything so I was just in this classroom full of these English-speaking citizens. You just have to learn, because there’s no translation anywhere. You can’t look at the back of a worksheet. They put me in summer school after second grade and that summer I didn’t really talk much in either language. I just stopped speaking altogether. In third grade I started speaking again in both languages. I could understand English, the basics, and I could communicate and have friends. Even now, it’s really hard when the languages intersect so I guess I just shut down for the purpose of immersing myself in English.
PLAY: It’s said a Spanglish language exists. Do you believe you’ve formed your own combination?
TR: Not really. Learning to read in English was actually the most embarrassing thing I’ve ever done. It was so sad because I’ve known how to read since I was four or five and learning to read again was just so embarrassing.
PLAY: If you had the opportunity to move back, would you?
TR: No, there’s too much corruption and I think much less opportunity there.
PLAY: So do you consider the States home now?
TR: I consider Northwestern home; I don’t consider Bryan, Texas home. I lack a definition of home, I guess. And that’s something I’ve had to live with: not having a home, not really knowing what a home is. I guess home is people to me.
PLAY: What exactly is your major? Not many people have heard of it.
TR: Learning and Organizational Change is used as a business major for some. It’s just the way organizations function and change through time. What a lot of kids do with it is business consulting. What I want to do with it is reform education in the third world. But those are high hopes.
PLAY: Explain, then, how you balance classes and your teaching job.
TR: It’s with the America Reads program. It’s a work-study job, just a basic job on campus. It’s one-on-one tutoring with the kids. I work with a kindergarten class and a third grade class. It’s a lot like a student-teaching opportunity, and I really like that because I feel like I’m really involved in the classroom. It’s really great. The kids are so sweet.
PLAY: What is your schedule like then?
TR: I was hoping to not have class Tuesday, Thursday and Friday but I added this Russian class because I really wanted to take it. It’s a Russian prose class where we read and write in Russian. It’s really cute. I’m hoping to work four hours on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, and we’ll see how the Russian class works out. If it conflicts too much with my work schedule, I’ll probably have to drop it.
PLAY: So in some way, work is a bigger priority?
TR: Right now, it will probably be a bigger priority just because I’m really interested in observing. I’m also really broke, so that helps.
– Shari Weiss