One thing we deal with a lot in this ministry is language barrier. English is never the first language in the households we work with, and it can be difficult interacting with many of the parents, who either don't speak English at all or are less than fluent. More difficult is when the kids don't speak English. Few of our kindergarteners, for example, speak any English at all. We expect that, and try to find teen helpers to translate for us. There are still kids in the older grades, however, who are just learning the language and have trouble adapting. A surprising amount of our older kids fall into this category. Unfortunately, we don't have enough translators to stick in every class; often we resort to finding a fellow student who speaks the same dialect (which can be difficult to match!) to help get the points across.
Here, for instance, a third grader with very little English comprehension got into a fight with a classmate. Emily had to pull another student from class to translate her message.
