Mohammad Haw, a native of Jerusalem, had his first taste of Thanksgiving Day turkey last year. This year, the Oak Park and River Forest High School student a Thanksgiving Day veteran — but he isn’t yet a fan of turkey.
“I don’t like it too much,” said the 15-year-old, sitting in his world language study hall recently with fellow students and teachers. Some of his classmates experienced their first Thanksgiving holiday this year. On Nov. 23, OPRF’s English Language Learner (ELL) class had its annual holiday party, which included students eating food from their classmates’ home country. The ELL class has two groups of students — exchange students living with Oak Park families while in the United States, and students who have moved to America with their parents. The class helps them brush up on their English, explained teacher Dana Tolomeo, who has held the Thanksgiving activity in her class for several years.
“It’s a way for students to experience the holiday who’ve never celebrated or had any experience with it before,” she said.
One student from Japan, who didn’t want to be named, said he went to a restaurant with his family last Thursday and ate some barbecue. He enjoyed the food and said his Thanksgiving was “awesome.” Another student, Justin, from Beijing, said he just stayed home with his family this year.
Haw experienced another American holiday tradition this year: Black Friday.
“It was really crazy,” he said of his Walmart experience with his dad. “It was 7 o’clock in the morning. We were standing in line in front of all these people.”
He and his dad went to find a PlayStation, but they were all gone by the time they got in the store. Shopping at American stores is really different from their home countries, said Armando Barajas, an ELL teaching assistant. In Jerusalem, for instance, many families shop at flea markets as opposed to large chains in the massive shopping malls of America.
Schools are also different, Tolomeo said. Haw’s school in Jerusalem has a total of 300 kids while OPRF currently has about 3,200. The food differences are fun to explore in class, especially around Thanksgiving, he said.
“Some students don’t have these kind of foods in their country that’s so common here in America.”
Cranberries and pumpkins are a couple of those foods, Tolomeo said. She and Barajas get the chance to eat foods from other countries as well, like Pocky (POKE-EE) from Japan, a chocolate-coated biscuit snack on a stick. The teachers said they enjoy a lot of the food. Their students do with some but not all American foods.
Along with turkey, Haw isn’t big on pumpkin pie, which Tolomeo made this year topped with whipped cream.
“You didn’t like my pumpkin pie? she asked.
“No,” Haw replied, laughing along with his teachers.
His favorite American food is KFC, their baked chicken especially. Justin — whose real name is Yiyang Wang but goes by the American name — said he likes American pasta.
This current group of ELL students, Tolomeo said, comes from 16 different countries. She plans to continue with the Thanksgiving classroom activity.
“It’s a way to connect with one another,” she said, “and see a country in a different light.”