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CASPER, Wyo. (AP) — Danny Villalobos walks into a small square classroom lined with windows on one side.
Through them, he can see a group of teenage girls, lounging on couches and laughing. He shifts his gaze to a group of five children seated before him. They're sprawled out in padded chairs around an oak table.
"Hi, kids!" he says.
The kids, ranging in ages 6 to 13, stand and bow.
"Kon'nichiwa," they say, which means "good afternoon" in Japanese.
They're here to learn how to speak foreign languages. The 15-year-old Villalbos is their teacher.
Villalobos approached Gary Nupp, teen coordinator for the Boys and Girls Clubs of Central Wyoming, three weeks ago about starting a language club. Nupp said he had neither the time nor the knowledge of foreign languages.
"I told him it was all going to be on him," Nupp said.
So the high school sophomore designed the lessons himself and spread word about a Japanese class that would meet at 4:30 p.m. every Monday and Wednesday at the club.
Villalobos has a "teacher's spirit," Nupp said. He knows how to spark the kids' interest.
"Instead of just forcing upon them what he wants to do, he listens to what they really want and makes it something they need," Nupp said. "That's a skill, that for a 15-year-old boy, that's really impressive."
The 15-year-old's resilience helps him connect with the kids, too.
"Danny has had a difficult childhood," Nupp said. "He would have every excuse in the world to be out there using drugs and chasing girls and getting bad grades, and he hasn't done any of that. He's more mature than most teens his age."
Villalobos has always been a translator for his Mexican parents. When he was a child, Maria and Rudy would sometimes buy him an ice cream cone for interpreting.
The experience sparked Villalobos' interest in learning more languages. He didn't waste time.
He started with Japanese in the fifth grade.
"The characters just look crazy," Villalobos said. "I just thought, 'I want to know what they mean.'"
For four years, the boy taught himself the language. Each day he used an app called "obenkyo" on his iPad to make 10 flash cards of Japanese words and phrases.
He knows 300 characters now.
Last year, on his first day at Kelly Walsh High School, Villalobos walked into Japanese I and said to his teacher, in Japanese, "Hello, my name is Danny."
"It was really easy for me," Villalobos said. "A lot of kids would get mad because I would know more than they would. But I don't like bragging."
Villalobos also taught himself by watching shows such as Naruto, a Japanese manga series about a ninja, and All About my Siblings, a Japanese drama.
He plans to learn 10 languages in his lifetime and he's already started on Chinese and Korean.
"They're not like other languages," Villalobos said. "They have their own characters. I love how they look and sound."
Villalobos wants to be a translator in Japan for well-known people, like politicians.
In September, Villalobos was named the 2014-2015 Youth of the Year for the Boys and Girls Club of Central Wyoming. At the end of his acceptance speech he thanked the crowd in seven languages.
There are three alphabets in the Japanese language. So far, Villalobos has taught his class one of them, called Hiragana.
"Since they're little kids they catch on so fast," he said.
He points at Japanese characters projected from his computer screen onto a white board in the small classroom.
"Ka, Ki, Ku, Ke, Ko!" the kids shout together.
Two 13-year-old boys, Isaac Prado and Kaleb Edwards, sit in the back, their chairs beside one another, their legs crossed.
"How do you say, 'Do you know how to build a house?'" Prado asks.
Villalobos tells him, with a smirk, that he'll know how to say that after he memorizes the alphabet.
Until then, the 15-year-old stands in front of his students, holding his hand against his ear and jutting out his thumb and pinky finger.
"Moshi, Moshi," he says.
That's how you say "Hi" to someone when you answer the phone, Villalobos tells his class.
"Sayonara," the kids say with another bow.
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Information from: Casper (Wyo.) Star-Tribune, http://www.trib.com
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