P.S. I used to use a book that was written in Russian (by Estonian authors before the break-up of the Soviet Union) and then translated into English as one of my course textbooks.
http://www.perpendicularpress.com/math6.html
The Russian mathematics textbooks are often very good indeed, and much more clear and more challenging than typical textbooks in the United States. You might find it interesting to read a link I learned about from another HN participant, "Word Problems in Russia and America," by Andrei Toom,
http://www.de.ufpe.br/~toom/travel/sweden05/WP-SWEDEN-NEW.pd...
which is full of interesting information about the differences in approach between mathematics lessons in Russia and mathematics lessons in most United States schools. The contrast between schools in China and the United States
http://www.ams.org/notices/199908/rev-howe.pdf
http://www.math.wisc.edu/~askey/ask-gian.pdf
or between those in Singapore and the United States
http://www.merga.net.au/documents/RP182006.pdf
are also food for thought.
Just to be clear I'm understanding correctly: first-generation immigrant means born outside the USA and now living in the USA, right?
So you teach math to first-gen immigrants from Russia? Are these adults or children? If children, I guess there must be a couple of kids who went thru the Russian education system that are bad at math. :)