Category: Unit 1 (Page 4 of 17)

My family is mostly made up of immigrants. My mom’s side of the family are from the Dominican Republic. My dad’s side of the family is from Nigeria. Both sets of my grandparents had migrated to the United States in order to find better opportunities. My mom grew up in the Dominican Republic as well but she soon moved to New York. That’s where she had met my dad. Growing up, I was mostly speaking Spanish and a little bit of Yoruba. It wasn’t until I got to kindergarten that I started learning how to read and write in English. 

Even though my mom didn’t know much English, she still made do in New York and helped me and my sister live an easier life. I remember my mom and grandma buying us those books where you had to trace the letters and numbers. Besides playing with dolls, those books were my favorite. My mom wanted us to learn how to read and write in English but at the same time, she didn’t want us to lose our ability to read and write in Spanish. She got us Spanish books as well so we can stick to our roots.

 When I was younger, I always excelled when it came to writing. By the third grade, I was able to write swiftly unlike my other classmates. I believe it was more so me being obsessed with my handwriting and wanting to perfect it. It got to the point where I taught myself to write in script. My 3rd grade teacher complained to my mom that I was too advanced and I shouldn’t be writing in script until about the 5th grade. Sounds to me like she was just envious of my skills. I didn’t excel so much when it came to reading though. My family wasn’t poor but we weren’t rich either. Every time there was a book fair at school, I wasn’t fortunate enough to have money to buy books like other students. I feel like that played a big part in my vocabulary. Since I wasn’t reading as much, my vocabulary couldn’t expand. It always upsetted me that I couldn’t read the books I wanted to when I was younger. I was only able to read little passages that my teachers would assign for class. There’s this teacher I had named Ms. Rivera. She was the best teacher I ever had. She’d donate books to me so that I can read them at home. I was grateful to have gotten these books because I wanted to be preeminent in reading. During my whole childhood, I read hundreds and hundreds of books. Unfortunately, as I got older the reading stopped. I would still love to read now but my attention span is not how it used to be. Growing up, I was able to learn english and also teach my family as well. Which was a big plus for me. I used to be frustrated trying to teach my family new words and phrases but it all worked out in the end. I’m glad that my upbringing was able to help my family bring us closer together in another language that we can both proficiently understand.

In describing how I learned the basic functions of what we learn and know- reading, writing and speaking (I know it was select one of them but I felt it wouldn’t be a complete story of mine unless I incorporated them all here. The first of which I remembered was learning to Read. I still have a picture of my first-grade teacher who I first remember reading words. She always gave us Fill-in-the-Blank worksheets which I had to learn how to read the sentences before I could fill in the blank. So I learned ______ Gomez was Jessica Gomez. And then I got better and filled in all the blanks after learning the sentences like “What’s Your Name”— and all of this is being done in English when for as long as I remember there were Spanish words and sounds.

The next step was in my learning to Write- not in Spanish but in English. I was now still living in North Carolina and all I was exposed to was the English language. The first year here was learning how to Read English and still understand and speak Spanish. I remember being in class in first grade and not understanding a lot of English but knowing that when I went home I would understand what was being said, what was written, and that I could read. But it only made me want to learn English even more. All I could hear in the back of my head in school was gibberish and confusion with both languages (English and Spanish) crashing together. But I remember one day in the first few weeks of school, my mother put tags on me and my sister’s bookbags which had our names and schools. This went on for a few days until my mother announced that WE would be writing our own tags. It took all day Saturday and Sunday- but we learned to WRITE our names and school which was named “BAILYWICK ELEMENTARY”. This was my introduction to Writing.

And finally, even though not required, I include my first experience Speaking the English language and it is this: I was in 3rd grade and still not very comfortable with English. Riding on the bus one morning, a little girl got on who looked just like me—scared, unsure and Brown. Even though she looked Brown like me she spoke English well and I didn’t think she knew anything but English. One day, we were in recess and she was alone. I approached her and said in English “ You look like me”. She said, In Spanish, “¿Hablas Espanol?” I said “Si!!!!”

She, like me, I found out was Mexican. Evelyn was the girl and she told me after many conversations in English that she was raised in a family who spoke ONLY Spanish at home and didn’t speak much English. So I also had the task and responsibility to not only learn how to read, write but also to SPEAK English so I could translate from the English I just learned to the Spanish my family spoke and now I had to give them the English Speaking knowledge I had just learned. I was now their teacher.