Author: Linettm

My motivation is a rollercoaster

I’m in class, spacing out, looking at my short, skinny fingers as if I don’t need to listen to what the teacher is saying. I look at the teacher looking right back at me, and we just stare for a good 10-15 seconds as if it were a staring contest. My teacher let’s call her Ms. W, Ms. W is known for being a strict teacher and saying such names to you in her own language. My older brother had her, and I would see him sometimes come back to school crying because of her, so when I found out I was going to have her, I got scared, as I didn’t want to come back home crying like he did. It’s the first day of class. I sit down near the window and start fidgeting with my nails as I’m nervous and get lost in my 8-year-old thoughts, “What time is lunch?” and “Did I bring enough money for…?” Ms. W starts raising her voice. “Linett Martinez? LINETT MARTINEZ?!” I was startled, and we had a staring competition. “Here” I say, shaking her head and mumbling something out of her breath “just like her brother”. During the duration of that class, we had to write a story about a picture that was on a piece of paper. Personally, I think that my story was the best of everyone’s, but Ms. W didn’t think so, and she called my story unoriginal and dumb. I’m only 8; what did she expect from me? Shakespeare? So, I just looked at her, snatched my paper back, and sat down. I had to write a new one before class ended or else it’d become homework, and I didn’t want to do that because I wanted to watch Tinkerbell once I got home. As everyone around me is starting to finish and getting told by Ms. W that it’s not good or the grammar is bad, As I finished my second story, she looked at it and told me something a 3rd grade teacher shouldn’t say: “This is not good; it’s bad. Are you slow?” Those words that I remember to this day After hearing those words, I started turning red, as red as a tomato or a chili pepper. Even I started telling her that I hated her, but I couldn’t say it properly in English, so I said in my first language, Spanish, “Te odio! te odio.” She looks at me, and I get sent to the office, where the principal made me explain what happened, and the principal didn’t believe me whatsoever, saying that it’s not believable that it’s the same excuse as what my brother said last year, and she calls my mother. My mother is already angry that she had to get out of work just because I acted out. Since my school was bilingual (English and Spanish), my mom started cursing out the principal in Spanish, going back and forth while snot came out of my nose and hugged my mom’s leg. Meanwhile, my mom tried to comfort me and yell at the principal at the same time, as this is not the first time this has happened with the teacher being so rude. Another mom that was there, also listening to my mom argue, backed her up, telling her that it happened with her kid in Ms. W class.

After that whole argument, my mom said she couldn’t afford to put me in another school, nor was Ms. W going to get fired. We went up to my classroom to get my Dora strap bookbag. Ms. W rolled her eyes at me, not knowing that my mother was outside the door, and sarcastically said bye to me. My mom saw her and came in, yelling at her, “Don’t you ever do that to my kid again, and don’t ever call her writing unoriginal again, or I swear I’ll come here every day and sit down with her and make sure you won’t do that to any other kid.” Ms. W, already knowing my mom, stood there quietly, just watching me pack my wooden pencil and my composition notebook, moving my little legs as fast as I could, reaching out for my mother’s hand to get out of the building. It was just my first day, and I felt horrible now that I knew what my brother went through. I didn’t expect third grade to be this bad. My mama is telling me to just go through with it and to keep pushing forward, and it’s okay. Just ‘echale ganas’ (put all your effort) wiping my tears and my snot. I just shake my head as an okay; I will put in my effort. After that first day of 3rd grade, I went back and tried my best in that English class. Ms. W was not even paying attention to my work after that day or trying to help me; if she did help me, it’d be a one-word response, not helping me improve on my reading and, most importantly, my writing to express myself so it could be original

Word count: 847

       My parents came to America in the 2000s, knowing no English or how to communicate. From then on, they had me and my older brother while growing up in a very Spanish household. Luckily, we went to a bilingual school, so they taught us how to write, speak, and read in Spanish as well as in English. I struggled. My brother and I struggled a lot. We had to learn a different language that we weren’t so used to. I would cry in frustration that I couldn’t be able to speak it well without an accent or say something right without screwing up a sentence or two. We both cried. This one English teacher that we both had helped us so much with our English. She was so memorable to us. I was just recently talking to my brother about how we were younger and struggled with English. My mom overheard us, and she told us about this one teacher we both had; let’s call her Ms. V.

         Ms. V was so patient with us through our cries and our tantrums; she stayed calm. She was always so calm and yet strict with our sentences and our essays. Before Ms. V’s help, my English grade were so bad, and I would lie to my parents about it, saying that it was not right, but as my parents always said, “El papelito dice todo (The paper says everything). With Ms. V’s help, my grades improved a lot. I’m really glad there are teachers like her who really care about their students. Even after primary school, my brother and I would still go to her for help with our English work. We refused to have another teacher help us; I don’t remember why. It just wasn’t the way that Ms. V taught us. Looking back now, I try to do my best because of all the time and effort she put in with us. She had an impact on my brother and me doing our best in our English courses and doing our best work, even if we still have to translate things in our heads.

Mike Bunn speaks to the reader through his article, “How to Read Like an Author. How Authors have unique writing styles and methods, just as we as students do in our essays or write in our personal lives. We have our own way of writing and express ourselves in our writing, for example. I express my writing through the essays that I’ve written over the past years, text messages, and handwritten cards that I have sent to my family and friends. Getting either my point through or information. With that existing expertise, it can help me through my college reading and writing career by taking the skills that I’ve learned in the past and present. When reading, I can annotate and take any section and paraphrase it in a way that I’ll be able to understand. While writing, I can try to make it informative by using the right words to get my point across. One thing that I noticed in Bunn’s article that I’ll like to try in my writing is to ask myself more questions about who the author is trying to direct it to so I can have an idea in my head to be able to understand from the author’s first-person point of view.