Newcomers

My summer school class has 5 students who have been in the U.S. for less than a year. 2 are from Mexico and 3 are from Nepal. Multiple other staff members have commented to me about how difficult it must be to have so many newcomers. It surprises me that they see it as such a challenge. To me, if I am modifying my curriculum to suit the needs of a newcomer anyway, it is no more work to have more than 1 student working on the modified curriculum. In fact, I like that I can have them in groups instead of having to do everything on their own. Field trips are a little more challenging, but other than that it isn't too challenging.
I wonder if part of my ease with newcomers comes from my 1st year teaching. On my very first day as a 5th grade teacher, I managed to get one newcomer to my room, but accidentally "lost" the other one assigned to me while coming up the stairs. Luckily, the school counselor figured out where he belonged a few min. after school started. That afternoon, I had a message in my box informing me I would be getting a new student. I went to the office to find out the students name the next morning and the secretary said "student?! You mean students! And neither of them speak English!" So day 2 of teaching and I had 4 newcomers from 4 different countries. I learned so much about teaching that year, and thanks to the circumstances, I also learned so much about working with newcomers. Those kids were a wonderful group of kids - through them, I discovered how much I love working with that population. I guess there are some things that you don't realize can be wonderful until you do it yourself.