Bringing Culture to the Classroom

Sophomore Ana-Sophia Lahovary inhales and starts the eight minute timer. She begins speed-reading the speech she just prepared during her opponent’s eight-minute argument. 

She flows through the speech, pronouncing long words even the judges don’t know. The opposing team moves from bullet point to bullet point, trying to keep up with her speaking and points. Walking back to her table, her partner shoots her a finger gun and approving nod.

No one in in that classroom at Blue Valley Northwest would have known that English was her third language.

Lahovary’s first word was “maman” — mom in French. She was born in Ottawa, Canada just like her father Christophe Lahovary, and grew up speaking French as her first language. But her mother Libby Lahovary, a Colombian immigrant, wanted her daughter to learn her first language, Spanish.

While she was still learning French and Spanish, she began learning English. She quickly became fluent with English as though it was her first language, being completely fluent by age four.

“Living in the U.S. for 13 years, English is just natural,” Lahovary said. “The way you speak English is the same way I speak English.”

At just two-years-old she moved to Durham, North Carolina — already having begun learning English — for twelve years before moving to Prairie Village just over a year ago when her mother got a new job as a biologist at Cargill. When signing up for classes at East before her freshman year, she decided to continue playing the flute like she had in Durham as well as sign up for a new activity: debate.

“I was in band in middle school and I loved it so I wanted to continue with it,” Lahovary said. “But with debate, I think it was something new I’d just always wanted to try and get competitive with, and now I love it.”

Although most high schoolers live for the two days every week they can finally sleep in, Lahovary gives up most Saturdays for twelve-hour debate tournaments with wake up calls at 5:30 am. While she was worried in the beginning about making a good first impression, she wasn’t worried about standing up for things she believes in — it isn’t new to her.

Being Canadian immigrants, the Lahovary’s have had to endure “Where’s your green card?” jokes and digs at her mom for being Columbian.

While Lahovary tries to avoid these types of situations, she finds it important advocate for immigrant rights — something she’s found herself able to do through debate.

“I try to ignore it mostly,” Lahovary said. “But it’s also really important to tell them in a diplomatic way that it’s wrong and they should never treat someone differently just because they’re from somewhere else.”

Experiencing discrimination first hand as an immigrant, Lahovary has a prior understanding of the concepts while debating, giving herself a stronger case to build.

Lahovary’s French teacher and debate coach Gina Halksworth agrees, and while she’s had bilingual students in French and debate before, she’s never had one like Lahovary.

“I see her in debate and she’s this competitive little thing, but in French she’s a little more reserved, which I think is because she wants to give the other French students a chance,” Halksworth said. “I don’t think a single one of my students would say it’s intimidating to speak around her, which really speaks for her personality.”

While debate is constantly improving her English, she makes sure to keep her fluency in French by taking French level four as a class at East. She may not have hundreds of pages of evidence and arguments to read as she does in debate, but she can still get to know French grammar more in depth — another reason she chose French as her language elective at East.

“A lot of people think of grammar when their learning French like math. Like what ending do you put on the end, is it a verb or an adjective?” Lahovary said. “I just think of what my dad would say because he’s always so grammatically correct. It’s just a different mindset.”

Staying fluent in all three languages is very important to Lahovary, as all of her extended family speaks to her in only French and Spanish. Consequently, she must stay fluent in both languages in order to communicate with her family at reunions. Also, rather than talking with her parents in English since they are all fluent now, they choose to speak in Spanish to mer mom and her dad in French.

“Passing down something like a language is very valuable,” Lahovary said. “It makes home feel more like home.”

Sophomore and friend Lily Utt finds it interesting to watch Lahovary text or call her parents. Lahovary talks to her dad over the phone in strictly French, while she texts or calls her mom in Spanish.

“She’s just a firecracker!” Utt said. “You see her and she’s this small girl, but she comes out and is multi-talented, multilingual, it’s crazy just how incredible she is.”