Youth tapping roots

On Saturday afternoons, while her neighborhood playmates sit down to bowls of cereal in front of the television, 9-year-old Sandra Hernandez studies Japanese culture and language.

Hernandez said that on the playground of St. Anne Catholic School, where she is a third grader, the language holds more interest than the other two languages she speaks fluently, English and Spanish.

"My friends ask me to say their names in Japanese," Sandra said. "It's fun, it helps me in school, but my mom says I will have better career opportunities."

Sandra is one of 69 area children ages 4-14 who attend the Japanese Saturday School in Las Vegas.

Any child interested in learning Japanese may attend the school, which is composed of children of Japanese parents as well as other nationalities.

The four-hour weekend sojourn into Japanese culture teaches students reading and writing and about art, food and music.

"We have festivals and know all about what the kids in Japan are like," Sandra said. "It's not like school, it's more fun."

It can also be tough, her mother, Norma Hernandez, said.

"This is a very serious school that is driven by the parents," Hernandez said. "It's amazing to see all that they do here, and they are so considerate."

The school is approved by the Japanese Ministry of Education, a government body in Japan, which supplies books and tests for math, language and comprehension skills for Japanese Saturday schools in more than 60 countries.

The Las Vegas school began in 1996 with the help of a few parents who wanted their children to maintain their Japanese heritage.

Classes are held in the empty classrooms of Clark High School 42 Saturdays a year. The school year starts each April, rather than September, and runs through the entire year, with time out for a 10-week summer vacation.

More than 100 parents work in shifts throughout the year during the four-hour school day. Parents ring the bell between classes and act as hall monitors and teachers' aides.

The schools are intended to ensure that children of Japanese nationals working in other countries continue their Japanese education for when they return to Japan.

"Japan schooling is very different than it is here," said Yutaka Nomura, president of the Japanese Saturday School in Las Vegas. "American (students) don't catch up (with the Japan curriculum) until the seventh grade, then they learn what we are already teaching."

Las Vegas is unique in that the parents who gathered to create the school were not Japanese nationals, Nomura said, but Las Vegans who moved from Japan to the United States.

"Most are permanent (U.S.) residents who want their children to be able to talk Japanese like they do and their grandparents do," Nomura said.

The courses include a curriculum class, which teaches Japanese language, comprehension and writing, and a mathematics class.

The International Course offers four Japanese classes for reading, writing, speaking, listening and comprehension. Classes are available for children age 6-14. Two kindergarten courses for children 4 and 5 years old are also available. Tuition for each class is $720 a year.

On a recent Saturday afternoon students snapped up homemade Japanese, American and Spanish treats from a school bake sale while their parents shared clean-up duties.

The parents' total involvement is what makes the small school run smoothly, said Yuko Takagi, vice president of the Japanese Saturday School Parent/Teacher Association.

"We all help so that they (students) have good classes," Takagi said. "Without the school they would only study English in the (local) schools. Japanese is very hard and we want to make it easy for them."

Takagi's two sons, Hidero, 7, and Kazuro, 9, have attended the school since 1998.

Each year the Takagis -- as do many of the school's families who are originally from Japan -- return to the country to visit family.

The children are able to speak with their grandparents and Japanese friends because of what they learn during their studies in the United States.

"We don't want them to forget," Takagi said.

archive