Throughout the four years a student spends at Campo, taking a language is both recommended and highly beneficial for a well-rounded education. The bonds formed between students who see the same familiar faces each year they step into their language classes, indeed, are a common source of companionship.
Junior Yi-Yi Nguyen has been taking Mandarin since seventh grade, and is now in Honors Mandarin. While her original class has grown and shrunk over the years, she expressed how familiar she still is with her current group: “I think that over time, we just become closer together and are kind of bonded by the common suffering we go through,” Nguyen stated. “Especially with [our] smaller classes.”
Senior Evren Basegmez also agreed with this in his six-year experience of language learning. As a current student in AP Spanish, which only takes up one period this year, he said, “I’ve definitely learned more Spanish and grown more as a person with my classmates, especially with people in my grade. Just speaking and practicing the language with the same people has definitely contributed to me getting better.”
Even with favored languages like Spanish in which there are multiple classes within language levels, classroom connections are still extremely valued.
This was also emphasized within the German classroom by juniors Kai Iwasaki and Chloe Thorn-Leeson, with Iwasaki commenting, “I get to know more people by taking German, and by knowing the same people, we’ve built a really good community.”
Thorn-Leeson similarly added, “I think we established a rapport with one another and a support system early on; on average, I think I’m closer with the people in my German class because we’ve been put together since freshman year.”
The community ties that grow stronger every year whether a student takes Spanish, French, German, or Mandarin have become an overlooked component of language classes. People choose a language based on interest or influence, and step into the classroom on the first day of school. But the same people who look up to greet them have, willingly or not, become a crucial part of that educational experience.
