Unit 1 – Education FINAL (Sara Reyes)

Imagine being in elementary school living your best life, straight A student in all topics and in one of the top 3 class. Then suddenly, you are in a class where you do not understand nor speak the language. Now you are failing, you’re frustrated and have no resources to better yourself? Yup that was me; part of an educational system that did not prepare us for what was coming in the upcoming year. They did not provide any resources prior or eliminating bilingual classes. Nor did they have a plan in place to provide assistance such as tutoring or 2^nd language programs to non-English speakers. Tutoring should be mandatory for non-English speakers. It should have been in place prior to the transition. The educational system failed us! 

Coming from a primary Spanish speaking family, I did not know English until later in life. We attended all Spanish classes. Meaning all the classes Science, Math, Writing, History even gym was taught in Spanish. When I was in elementary school, we had bilingual classes. I was able to attend school in Spanish. Homework and class work were provided in Spanish as well which made life very easy being that I can ask for help at home as my parent & sibling spoke Spanish. I have the necessary resources to excel in school and pass all classes with high grades. My mother was able to help me with homework and when she couldn’t help me, I would be able to ask my brother for help. However, everything changes when I entered the 3rd grade. The bilingual classes were phased out and student coming from Spanish classes were entering an all English class without prior preparation. Note: I did not speak English at all. If I knew 5 -6 words that was a lot but not enough to transition to an English class and keep the grades I already had.  

I remember my mom receiving a letter in the mail during the summer break basically saying that my brother and I were scheduled to take an English assessment exam as bilingual classes were no longer available for the upcoming school year. I was never able to wrap my head around the decision-making team. How can you transition Spanish speaking students to an all-English class with no preparation? What was the point of taking an assessment exam when they knew that the students weren’t fluent in English and majority of the students came from a Spanish speaking home where their English was broken? I’m pretty sure I failed the exam but here we were 3^rd grade English class!

The English-speaking teacher I was assigned to Ms. Clarke, didn’t really have time to sit one on one and hand hold us throughout the class. I had a million questions, and I couldn’t really relate my questions to her because of the language barrier. We would use hand gestures to get our message across; if that; or she would just be frustrated and ignore me. I remember her saying “wait til home” (that I understood) as in “wait until you get home to ask for help”. Little did she know that my mother couldn’t really help me because she didn’t speak English herself. It was a frustrating situation for everyone. I remember crying to my previous teacher and telling her how much I hate English if I can go back to her class. I knew we couldn’t, but it was worth the shot. 3^rd grade was a very emotional time in my life. I was very depressed and felt helpless most of the time.  I was not used to receiving low grades and always was afraid to fail especially in school. I felt like we were all set up to fail and a lot of parent & teachers did too.

Before the ELA/ESL program was put in place by the educational system, Bilingual teachers came together in the evening and provide free tutoring and English reading lessons to students and parents. The program back then was called SFA (today it is called ELA/ESL). SFA was a life safer not only because it was run by the bilingual teacher’s we were familiar with but because the teacher made it a fun learning experience for both parents and students.  

The program was broken up into 3 sessions. You had the “during school hour” program which was strictly for students. We were allowed to get a lunch pass to sit in the SFA class during lunch hours. The one-on-one sessions which were for selected students. Those students were handpicked and pulled from gym class or the auditorium (movie time) because they needed more help. Then you had the evening session. My favorite. It allowed both students and parent to take the class together. We learned the fundamental of English. The English alphabet. What’s your name? How old are you? Where you live? Etc., before jumping into school material and reading sentences. Let me tell you, there is nothing funnier than hearing Spani