Both of my parents come from the Dominican Republic and don’t know English. From the moment that I was born, I grew up learning only Spanish. For the first couple of years of my life I had always had people speak to me in Spanish, “Dessire adonde estas !”,”Dessire para adonde vas”, “Dessire venga aqui, que te necesito”. By the time that school had started I had been quite confused. At home I would speak one language, while at school another. Luckily for me I had older cousins in my exact position. As the days passed they taught me English at home. Slowly but surely I had learned how to communicate with my teachers and continuously adapted to my environment. After some time I was able to translate between the two languages.
My teachers grew prouder and prouder of me to see that I had understood so quickly. These were the same teachers that my cousins had as well. They knew what to expect when it came to my family and had actually been wonderfully pleased. I knew that I had to keep working harder to make everyone proud of me. At the time I had been placed in the 0.2 class; always being second best but never at the top. I have two other cousins that are the same age as me but they had been placed in the 0.1 class. I never did like feeling as though I wasn’t smart enough to be in the same class as my cousins. I then found myself looking at my older cousins for help. Together we would go over the curriculum two even three times until I understood everything. During class I began to show my teachers what I had learned. Any questions that they had asked the class , I was eager to answer. They then kept using me as an example from there on out. As I progressed in that school, grade after grade I had been moved up to the 0.1 class. Those same teachers followed up on me every year after that.
Today , I go back to my elementary school and show them how far I’ve come. Just as when I was little, they are still very proud of what I have been able to achieve and so am I.
I also faced the obstacle of being doubted by the language barrier. I had moved from school with a bilingual curriculum to a monolingual school. I had to be integrated to an ESL program with sessions to be observed on my abilities. Although I am fluent in English and Spanish I was questioned ob my ability to grasp the school work. At times it felt inadequate because I was taken from lesson that occurred in class. I felt that I did not belong to the ESL group but never superior. English was always a subject I did not really enjoy and during the sessions I was able to further improve my knowledge on English.