While growing up I had always spoke Spanish fluently and never had trouble speaking or writing it. My family comes from Dominican Republic which is a Spanish speaking country. In school I had always had my good subjects such as English, social studies, science and my not so good subjects like math. My senior year in high school I had officially taken all the math requirements I needed to graduate but I still needed a class to fill in that space. I was told that I didn’t have any language credits and had to choose between spanish and Chinese. I chose spanish. I believed it would be easy for me to pass since I already speak it. I walked into the class confidently knowing it will be a breeze. My spanish teacher asked “Do you speak spanish fluently?” I replied ” yes I do, I speak it at home.” At first me and my spanish teacher got along just fine and I was glad that I was able to have a good bond with my spanish teacher I looked at him as a “cool” teacher. The week when assignments were due came up for non spanishing speaking students they had to do work online on a website. For us native speakers we got writing assignments about any topic of our choice. I submitted my first assignment. “You wrote this?” he asked ” yes I did. Is there something wrong with it ?” I replied back. When he was reading my work he looked shocked not believing how fluent I actually was and I was given a low grade for it.
I was told that I used google translate for this assignment I was upset knowing I didn’t. The months passed and I disregarded all comments and just did my work for the credit, I would never get a full 100 it was always in the 80’s or low 90’s. At the end of the year we had to do one final assignment for his class which would depend if we passed the class or not. The assignment for us native speakers was to write a story about anything and so I did. before I had given in anything he said ” I don’t think you’ll pass my class.” I wondered why I was getting these kind of comments when there were other students who never did their work but nothing was said to them. It made me question my abilities. Was my work not good enough? Was I not smart enough? When I gave in my story my final grade was an 80. I was furious. I knew I deserved better because I had spent hours writing it. “You used google translate, I shouldn’t even read this.” My spanish teacher put it into his computer to see if I had gotten it from somewhere and no results came up. He still chose to believe I didn’t write it myself but I knew my abilities and I knew I could give in good pieces of work. I had my grades and peers to prove it. I ended up passing my spanish class along with all my other classes. I graduated and it felt good walking across the stage and seeing him sitting front row.
