My 2nd Grade Struggle
The English language is very complicated as it is. Now imagine how difficult it must’ve been to an eight-year-old to learn. I had come from El Salvador, and Spanish was the only language I was familiar with. Well, not entirely, considering you only know the basics at such an age. I arrived in New York in October, and school had already begun. My mother, younger sister who was four, and I walked into the office of P.S. 242 in Harlem. I was expecting to be placed in 3rd-grade, for I had already completed 2nd grade in El Salvador, but that wasn’t the case. I started that same day in 2nd grade with Ms. Kohn and about twelve other students.
I genuinely felt like an outsider, and everyone was gazing in my direction. My teacher didn’t know how to communicate with me, and the longer I sat there, the sweatier my palms got. It wasn’t until a translator came into the room 10 minutes later that I felt somewhat at ease. From what I recall, we spent about a week going over how to correctly pronounce the letters of the alphabet and numbers. There were days where I felt confident, and I was retaining information. Yet, I still struggle a lot at home. My mother was continually working, and my two older siblings didn’t know enough English also. Now that I think back on it, they were also struggling, but they did what they could to help my younger sister and me.
A month in, with the help of my translator, I was forming five-word sentences, not the best, but they were okay. What helped me a lot was observing the environment I was in. The classroom was covered with illustrations, and the first thing I memorized was the schedule posted on the door. The day I memorized it, I went home and translated it using an electronic translator. By understanding the schedule, I connected certain vocabulary words with some of the subjects. For instance, when it was math time, I noticed that the word “addition” was said every time the plus sign was written. I attempted to do this for each subject, and it did improve my reading a lot.
By December, I was reading and writing a couple of sentences on my own. There was this one time when I attempted using Spanish to form an English sentence, and it didn’t go so well. I noticed that “called” is spelled similarly to “calle” in Spanish, which means street. So what did I do, you may ask? I formed the following sentence: “I crossed the called.” I was pleased with it until I saw Ms. Kohn’s confused face. After that day, I never applied that method to my writing because it obviously did not work. Instead, I began to pronounce English words I couldn’t remember, in Spanish, and until this day, I still practice that.
Things didn’t go so well in the second half of 2nd grade when my translator had to go back to her home country. I was all on my own, but I was confident. That went down the drain when I had to read to my teacher to determine my reading level. Several of my classmates were reading at a level O, while I was struggling to pass level F. It was evident that I needed great help. That is when I met Mr. Anthony, who encouraged me every step of the way until I graduated from elementary school. He was extremely patient with me, and that drove me to continue learning.
Fast-forwarding to today, I sometimes find myself struggling to write and feel as if I’m not at the level I’m supposed to be. Nevertheless, I use that as motivation to keep improving because learning never stops.
