September 29, 2021 

Growing up, I surrounded myself with family members whose first language is English. With that being said, my first language became Spanish, not English. I didn’t mind just knowing Spanish; I could speak and listen to my family’s conversations after all. It didn’t seem much of a problem to me until I started school.  

Starting school at the age of 4, I found it very nerve-wracking to go to school all by myself. I remember crying on the first day to my dad as he dropped me off at the front door, sobbing to him, saying, “por favor no me dejes aqui.” Even with all my pleads, my dad dropped me off at school. As I was brought into my classroom, I remember the feeling of being an outsider from everyone else after seeing how most of the kids in the class spoke English. Though, it slightly faded as I saw a group of kids and my teacher speaking in Spanish. In the first week of class, I realized that most of the books and worksheets that my teacher gave me were in English and not in Spanish. I found it difficult trying to pronounce the words and trying to complete my assignments by myself. I remember my teacher’s classwork, which involved plugging in terms “have got” or “has got” into a sentence. For instance, the sentence would be “The clown ___ three balloons.” Even with these simple sentences, I couldn’t finish the work at the same pace as other English-speaking students. This got me to the point where I felt very distressed and began to doubt myself from ever learning a new language. Classwork that consisted of tying vocabulary work to their definition were ones that I found very tricky. Failing to correctly pronounce the word made it difficult for me to memorize both a vocabulary word and its definition.  

Explaining this might seem as if I was alone throughout my time in Elementary school, thankfully that’s not the case. Being around a teacher who knew how to speak both languages and my classmates who only knew how to speak Spanish made me feel less ashamed of not understanding the materials we went through. My teacher, Ms. Ramos, was very passionate and caring for the students, but I thought she was more understanding and patient to students like me who didn’t know how to speak English. While we went over our classwork or homework, she had given us the previous day, she would go to each student individually and ask if they needed any help. When it was my turn, I took up her offer and said yes to her assistance. I would tell her my concerns and issues with the work, as she would explain it in-depth to me, I began to understand more clearly what I needed to do. She would even help me pronounce words that I struggled with due to my accent. Her constant motivation encouraged me to get as much help as possible and practice more in my English. 

Every time we finished a lesson, we had to take an exam to see how good our progress was. The first exam we took involved writing a short story of an event that we found memorable using the words that we learned in class, and the story had to be written in English. I remember deciding to write about the time I went to the central park zoo with my parents and two sisters. While writing my story, I tried my best to spell out words and use the vocabulary words to describe the weather and the animals we saw. I wrote about seeing the monkeys, birds, and sea animals and the time my parents kept taking pictures of my sisters and me. As I finished it and handed it to my teacher, I remember the feeling of happiness knowing I was able to write something entirely in English. Although there were a few errors in my writing, I knew it was still an achievement I made knowing I wrote something in English while not fully understanding the English language.