Education Narrative – YongYu Chen

What genre means to me is like a series that categorize stories that talk about something. So I assume that the genre about education must be fun and inspiring.

My school career is relatively mediocre like most of people as immigrants over 10 years-old. Unlike with people who were born in United State of America, people as immigrants over 10 years-old have to experience few steps like first attending to school in native country for over 6 or 9 years, 6 years for elementary school while plus 3 years for middle school. And then for high school, they have to leave their hometown and move all the way to America, no matter which city they will move to. These two steps look easy and normal, but for people as immigrants, it is more like a transition or say a chance that bring their life into the next phase. I do not mean that it is not good, but it is too sudden. Imagine that your family gained the access of immigration when you were very young and they chose to not use it as soon as possible but left it and wait for your grown. They would like to have a long term plan, which is great idea. But for something further more, this long term plan that sound perfect only cultivated a pain. What kind of pain will it be?  It is a pain that children adapted one country’s living environment, and treated the city, the place where they grow up as hometown with special emotion, formed so many living habits, more important thing is that all of friends and so many memories are all in hometown. But suddenly children have to be apart away with all of these. Yes, departing away with all of them and nothing left. What comes next is to restart your everything, no matter what everything is about, in another country. People who are optimistic would like to define this whole process with a word “rebirth”, they would like to describe it as one of element in games. But for some people who are kinda with depressive ideology, they feel this sucks. After all, life is not a game and is unlike with games too. In games, every mistake that you made can be fixed by restarting button but in reality, you cannot. Anyway, everyone is different and the ways to solve things are different too. all the things that i talk above are from my heart. I hided these stuffs in my deep heart and will not touch it. Because these should be complaint, or not. Event I can’t tell these are hatred or more like a talk of experience. Never mind, just wanna talk about my heart.

When I really land on the territory of USA this country, my status is just like what I talk above. I ever got everything but now I have to waive them to be nothing and restart everything. To be honestly, I felt lost. And this feeling finally was terminated until I attend high school in New York. I remember that It happened almost four years ago and that was in an advisory class. By the way, my high school is an international public high school, and students over there are all immigrants just like me. My mentor at the time is a very nice Ms. She understood that not everyone can talk in English smoothly, especially students from Asian. Both grammar and pronunciation are frequent mistakes. But she never ever got annoying of this, instead, she would be patient listening to every student. In other word, she gave everyone respect and treated us the same. Be seriously, respect this English is not that difficult comprehending in any of languages. But in USA, respect is precious. This is sorta hilarious and I really want to say that USA is full of discrimination. It was almost my turn to give a speech but i was not ready yet. Also, I was not able to organize words with English in my brain even I had lots of English classed in my native country. Forget me, I was not a good student before immigration. It costed kind of long time by me to say few words out of my mouth, I clumsily told my name and my interests with several simple words. I admit that this scene looked like I am an inferior robot with many bugs and be incompatible with language module in my system. Even though everything messed up, my mentor still clapped for me. And even mates round me made applause exactly for me. I ever experienced many kind of educating ways, the majority of them were harsh and critique. But this time, I was able to distinguish that It was encouragement, my really first time to have contact with encouragement, from teacher and mates. That brought me a weird feeling, it was like even though everyone is over ten more years-old and suffered a lot, still be clean, simple, nice to greet you with their last virtuous heart. That scene was just like kindergarten, I don’t mean it was naive but I mean that I was warmed. After this class and few months later, that was my first Christmas holiday recces. I finally found the best way that I most satisfy with to relearn and research English. There was only one thing inspiring me, which was the that little warm from a candle that mentor and virtuous mates lighted for me. Thank you very much and I appreciate this!

Please allow me to share one of my logs, I wrote this down on my diary after that first Christmas holiday recces:

“After first immigration in my life and move to New York, I felt lost.

Due to language problem, different culture, living habit, even the food too.

I could’t adapt, or say I felt I wasn’t accepted by this city.

But it’s not like that

When I got to high school, I realized something that we are all different, one individual.

For me, it more means everyone is fine to adapt sth, accept sth or not; everyone is different and we are all free.

Free to manage what life habit you like,

Free to be what kind of person with traits you wanna be,

Free to choose any ways to deal with anythings.

Therefore, I suddenly understood that we are all different and free to be an existence in this world.”

This’s one piece of my stories in education career. Even it’s ordinary, never mind, because just like what I was talking in the second or third paragraph above, everyone is different. Both the ideology of everyone to understand something and the concept of everyone to differentiate what is precious, race or not are all different. This piece of story encourage me so that I get so far, at least I’m not an illiteracy. I’m grateful to everything and everyone that ever help me up a lot. Thank you all, thank you.