Danya: It was definitely very very hard when I was first plopped into a Russian school. I was old enough that I kind of prepared myself for it. It was like “Ok, you’re not going to know what is going on... just sit there and do nothing. It doesn’t matter.” And, that’s pretty much what I did. If I didn’t know what was going on, I just sat there and did nothing. Arden: The only things that I knew about Russia was that it had a lot of snow, they speak a different language and they have Matryoshka dolls. That’s literally all I knew. Emmett: [In Russian] It was very difficult to speak Russian. But, now I speak fluently. It is easy for me to speak. TITLE: AN EDUCATION: FOUR YEARS IN A PROGRESSIVE RUSSIAN SCHOOL Bogin: Comrades! Are you ready to start the day? Arden: We moved to Moscow because of my dad’s work. He’s a journalist for The New York Times. Cliff: Say hello on the first day of school Kids: Hello. Arden: My family decided that we would all the kids go to Russian schools because we really wanted to live in the culture and get to know it. Danya: So, I didn’t know that much about Soviet schools. All I knew was that all the kids had to sit there very straight and they had to put one arm up when they want to raise their hand and it’s all very strict and the teachers were not nice and they would yell at the kids and call them stupid. I did know that I didn’t want to go to a school like that. Bogin: Soviet school was the school where there were only two opinions. The opinion of teacher which was the right one and all the others which were wrong. My vision was this school to be quite different. And the children must be taught to think. SLATE: IN 2007, THE LEVY CHILDREN WERE THE FIRST NON-RUSSIAN SPEAKING STUDENTS TO ATTEND THE SCHOOL. Bogin: They were put in a very very difficult situation because they were not prepared for learning in Russian. The methods are different. Everything is different and I had a lot of doubts. Arden: It was hard especially in the first year, there were times when I was like “Omigod get me out of here.” Julie: She’s not happy. Cliff: It’s alright. She’ll be fine. Arden: I was actually excited about learning Russian before I learned how it’s actually very hard to learn a different language. // I learned not to beat myself up for not being as good as the other kids because there was really nothing I could do about it. I just didn’t speak Russian and they did. Danya: Russian is a very hard language. People think that for kids it’s so easy to learn a language which is true to a certain extent. But I was 9, when I started learning the language and it was really hard. // After 4 months when I didn’t really speak the language... It was very frustrating because if you wanted to say something and you can’t it’s very annoying. // My brother Emmett who was 4,5 had a very different experience than I did because I don’t think he even noticed he was somewhere else besides the fact that people were speaking in a strange language he didn’t understand. Emmett: Sometimes I actually didn’t understand what I had to do. // I feel like don’t know this. I can’t do this. What is this for? Sometimes I’d just get frustrated. Danya: My parents were worried that it’d be too stressful for us. Arden: We came here from going to PS 321 a Brooklyn public elementary school. At PS 321, it was like, everyone’s a winner. The most important thing is to have fun, everybody plays, there’s no like first, second or third place. Here it’s like a different planet. Bogin: Out of 18 points. Here’s what you got. Danya: Here they send an entirely different message to the kids. They’re like “learning is hard. But, you have to do it. You have to get good grades, that’s just what you have to do.” Arden: In the hallway, they hang up the rating for the entire school to see and there’s like different groups. There’s the best, then the middle then the worst and then the “omigod, you’re really bad.”