From Kosovo to Fremont: Cultural differences I’ve seen since becoming a Silverwolf
As a new student from a different continent, I have noticed the culture at Fremont is quite different.
When talking about cultural differences, the whole thing with calling teachers by their last or first names and not referring to them with a Mr. or Ms. is quite the culture shock. Where I come from, we absolutely have to refer to a teacher with a Mr. or Mrs. before their last name, and if we didn’t, it was disrespectful.
The culture is very different here, the traditional concept is that Mrs. has the old meaning of the woman belongs to a Mr., but most students say Miss or Ms they don’t mean the old way. They mean miss which is the proper way to refer to a female.
In my home country, we would often get punished for disrespecting the teacher ranging from just getting yelled at to being slapped, not only for titles, but other things as well. While nowadays kids might not get punished by physical force, and when teachers did it they would get repercussions, but when I was in first grade our teacher would punish anyone who didn’t do their homework by making them go to the front of the class, making them explain why they didn’t do it and then slap them.
Physical punishment is much more common from elementary through middle school in my hometown. Once in high school, slapping students was less likely, but teachers would be able to grab students who weren’t following the rules.
Also, here people tend to just get up and go to the bathroom, and maybe scan a QR code without asking a teacher, or simply walk out of the room, and some people don’t even scan the code. Where I come from, we have to ask the teacher for restroom breaks, and half the time they say no you can’t.
Where are you from and what brought you to Utah?
This isn’t the first time I’ve been in the U.S. I was originally born in Texas and lived there until I was five. I went to preschool in Texas and left for Europe before I entered the first grade. When I turned five, my parents decided that we needed to move closer to their families and we moved to Kosovo. Kosovo is a small country near Albania, which if you don’t know is near Serbia, if still you don’t know all you have to know is that it is near Greece.
Kosovo came out of war in 1999 where it declared independence from Serbia. I lived there for eleven years where I went to middle school, junior high, and my sophomore year of high school there. I have visited the U.S other times before but I never went to any other school. My dad has been in the restaurant business for over 15 years now. While he was in Utah visiting, he saw an open lease where he saw an opportunity for a family style restaurant where our family and my dad’s sisters came to work all together. That’s what brought me to Utah and eventually to Fremont.
