Category: Module 1 – Literacy Narrative (Page 4 of 11)

Section 1 of Body Idea’s

Okay so essentially, I got imported from my homeland [Dominican Republic] across the great big blue sea, to the Ol’ US of A. Around the calm age of 9, on a serene windy evening, my mother calmly approached me at the dinner table. She softly tapped my shoulder to get my attention. I’m slightly perturbed as I was laser focused on my homework, whilst the loud TV blast in the background. She says to me “Mijo, tengo algo que decirte ”(My son, I have something to tell you.) I responded as I realized who it was, “Hola Ma, que paso? Estaba haciendo mi tarea. ”(Hi Mom, What ‘s up? I was doing my homework.) She said, “Lo veo mi amor, tengo unas buenas noticias.” (I see my love, I got some good news, ) I then realized what she about to tell me, and feel a bit disappointed, “Nos approvaron las visas?”(Did they approve our green cards?) My mom looks at me worried, “Si Mijo, al fin nos approvaron. Dime que paso? Tienes la cara larga.” (Yes my son, we finally got approved. Tell me what happened? You’ve got a long face.) I then proceed to talk about how I’m then going to have to leave everything behind. I have to leave my friends, my family, my neighbors, my community, and everything that I cherished at that time.

I was a well composed child, so my mother partially understood that I was processing what was about to occur. I was already aware it was going to happen some time or another. My brother had left a few months ago shortly after finishing his first semester of 2nd grade. I felt oddly about him leaving at first, but then got used to it, then came June of 2010. The day I had to leave everything behind, and start anew in another land that I was not mentally conscious of.

Section 2 of Body Idea’s
So here comes the big day, my flight was at 6 AM, mind you I haven’t been on the big flying metal bird in well over half a decade. Now we arrive at departing immigration (I have zero clue as to why we have this to be honest), so we get there and for some odd reason there has to bed a fee of $1,400 Dominican Pesos (a calm $24.69 USD), which back then that was a lot of $$$. We have to borrow some breesh (NYC slang for cash) to pay some of the fee. Once we move on from here………..[To be continued]

Back in 2015 (or 16, not entirely sure), I decided to choose my “Career” in life and that was to be a mechanic. Now the thing about that decision is that I was a 14/15 kid who had basic awareness of how the world revolved around me. You usually have a couple life realizations of when you gain “consciousness.” You know kinda like realizing “Oh crap I’m a child to these ppl??? Wait, that’s how cash works??? You have to wash your dog???” those types. Thoughts that bring on questioning everything. So in retrospect 8th grader me was deciding my fate for the rest of my life, not fun when you have 2million other options.
So back to the story, I decided to go with one of my passions “Cars,” following that decision I applied to the great schools in the fine city of New York to learn automotive technology. From there on I a few months passed, and I got accepted to a few schools. I decided to go to Automotive High School, with a percentage of 90% male population on campus. I then spent a year there. I had about 5 English teachers within the span of my first semester, some had scandals, some had anger issues. My favorite one of them all was this one teacher who seemed to be fascinated by Shakespeare. He taught us about the great pieces of literature Shakespeare wrote, which to me was interesting. Since I wasn’t able to do any freshman automotive shop classes, this had me for once interested in literature

My favorite classes at this school ended up being Art and English, and I only add english solely because of that one professor.

Section 3 of Body Ideas

I remember being really nervous to go to school and meet new people that I couldn’t understand or communicate appropriately with. Around the time of summer of 2010, my mom took me to the Public School 19 Roberto Clemente, which was the nearest school when I used to reside in Williamsburg. As I was approaching the building, I remember thinking to myself, “Do they speak my language? Can they understand me? Are they people with short fuses?” As I entered the building I was guided by a lady to sit at any table; naturally I went to sit at a table by myself. As I looked around I began to notice that it seemed that there were other kids that looked similar to me, “Perhaps they also spoke my language?” I uttered to myself. After a while of sitting by myself , the bell signaling class went off.. Kids began to line up in lines for their respective grades. I took my line which had the number 3 in it, which stood for third grade. As we were walking up the stairs, I took out this little paper my mom had given me. Inside it said “Cuarto 330, Señor Vargas.” Which meant my room number was 330, and my teacher’s name was Mr.Vargas. As I was going to my classroom, I saw a man with slicked back gelled hair, and a light gray suit standing outside of 330. He says to me in Spanish, “Oh, you must be Julio. My new student. It’s nice to see you, welcome to my ESL class.” I looked up at him confused as he was speaking to me in spanish. This was my first interaction with someone other than my family who spoke English and spanish. From here Mr.Vargas, taught me how to comprehend english and how it was very similar to spanish. He gave me books to read, assignments to practice my writing skills, vocal practices for pronunciations, which helped me develop new skills to overcome my struggle of adapting to my new environment, my new language, and my new school. As time went on, I had left Mr.Vargas’s ESL group at the end of fourth grade. This leads to me being proactive to take actions and learn new things that I don’t know.
I always loved fixing things and solving problems, yet I decided to be a mechanic. Shortly after I chose my new career path as a mechanic, I applied to Automotive High School. Which was supposedly one of the best schools to learn how to become a mechanic. I was really excited to try new things, and get placed in a shop class on how cars work and stuff. Well here was my issue, I was one of the few applicants which couldn’t get an intro class, this then placed me on a list which wouldn’t be able to do any shop classes until their second semester as a sophomore. I was extremely disappointed when I heard this news. This made me feel as if I wasted my time and effort. After my first semester I didn’t really feel all that interested in becoming a mechanic anymore. I had decided I will pursue a career with my other joy, which was technology. I remember Bila romani’s “Chronicles of a Once-Pessimistic College Freshman ” where he said how much he disliked how the high school system sifted through kids, and sorted them arbitrarily. This was similar to my case, since I wanted to do a shop class but due to a random selection program I wasn’t able to do an early class, but this then led me to take another means of action. I now began the search for a new school. I attended the school fair, then the transfer fair, and finally applied for my transfer. After a month of research and picking out which schools interested me the most. I had narrowed my choices down to two schools. First was a school named Performing Arts & Technology High School, the other was William E. Grady CTE High School. These schools were great candidates for expanding my interest in technology.
As I patiently waited for my transfer response to arrive in the mail, around the middle of March, my mother got a call. This call was from the Department of Education (DOE), stating that my transfer was denied since the distance is within an hour of travel. The following day I then proceeded to head down to the nearest DOE office, and we requested a hearing for further as to why it was denied. I was then again tld that I was within an hour of time to get to my Automotive HS. I had to explain to them that if service was delayed by even 15 minutes. I would be arriving late and it would end up with travel over one hour. They went on and said, “well why don’t you take another train?.” We then discussed how much time it would take if I were to commute via another train, the traveling time would be well over an hour and twenty minutes. I kept persisting with them that it would be a better decision to allow me to go to another school as I would not be happy with what I’m currently working on at this present school. Finally they gave me an option. The only option I had was to get a stamp of approval from the principal agreeing to a safety transfer. Thankfully, after explaining the situation and showing the letter of denial the principal had made the decision of approving my transfer. I would have to bring the approval and a new transfer form to the DOE office so that I would be allowed to change schools. Finally after two weeks of waiting I received a letter with my approved appeal to transfer schools, and seeing this letter gave me hope for my new future.

Throughout my life there have been many turning points in my education since I moved to America from Pakistan. it was hard for me to go through these times, but Ii feel like if I didn’t go through these points in my life, I wouldn’t be the person that I am today. these points played a huge role in my life and everything turned out okay in the end . Some of those turning points have been because of language barriers, distractions, procrastination and peer pressure. But the worst and most impactful turning point in my educational life was in my Sophomore year at James Madison High School. This year was really hard for me and this experience changed me a lot. This impacted me mentally a lot. its because of these reasons that I’m able to be better than I was before and am now where I am.

There are two turning points that affected my education a lot.  The first one was when I moved from Pakistan to America. I didn’t understand the language and had a lot of trouble in school. I couldn’t understand what the teacher was saying to me so it was very hard to understand what she was teaching.  Also because of the language barrier, I couldn’t speak English and didn’t make many friends. also I was used to learning in Pakistan, where the studies were much easier and when came the study was much harder.  but things got easier for me when my class changed and and I went into the new class, I started understand basic  words of English and there I met some of my best friends today that helped me translate my language Urdu to English which made it a lot easier for me to understand what the teacher was saying and helped me do work better and do better in class. if my friends didn’t help me out at that time I’m pretty sure I wasn’t going to understand anything in school and it would have been a lot harder for me.The turning point in my education was that I was  failing many Classes such as history and English  in high school as a Sophomore student. I had a lot of trouble with writing in English class and history class when we had to do essays and I dint really care about classes because I hadn’t failed a class as of that year and had no idea that I would fail. it was crazy when I found out, I was so shocked about my grades, I thought that I could just fool around and everything would still be fine. . My English teacher would give us a lot of essays and it was very hard for me since I was used to procrastinating, I would wait until the last minute to my essays and when the last minute came and I started my work, I would notice that this is too much work. also when I found out that this was too much to be done at the moment I would give up or I would just write the assignments rushed or I would just forget about it.  and I would often skip class .I didn’t really care about my grades at that time, I was distracted by other things that weren’t good for me. I would skip class and go hang out with my Friends in the hallways, some big part that messed me up was peer pressure, when I saw a lot of my friends weren’t going to class, I would do the same with them. if I tried to go back on track and start attending classes they would stop me from going and that was a big reason for my failure. I knew I messed up when it was too Late, after we had gotten our semester grades. I understood that I made a mistake and I needed to do better when my parents found out about this and everyone was disappointed In me. This was a really important event to me because at that time I was going down a bad road that was gonna mess up my life but I got back up and tried harder and started going to class and paying attention. After that I got good grades the next semester and passed. Everyone was proud of me and I was really happy and now that happiness is what’s leading me to doing better in school and trying my best to graduate college and get a good job in the future.

Now, I feel like I’ve become a better student and a better person and I’m trying my best to accomplish all my dreams. This turning point in my life was a lesson for me to see how life is if I mess around and am not careful.