One meaningful moment

         I can still recall the day my pre-K 3 teacher asked us to gather in a circle to meet some new friends. My classmates and I were so excited to meet new people or  learn new things. While we were all sitting in a circle on the carpet, which had images of streets, buildings, and cars; we were all talking or communicating with the little English we had at the time.  Once she was ready she got our attention and told us to be very quiet so as to not scare our new friends away and brought out a puppet, with a letter on it. She had one for each day for the rest of the month, and each puppet had a book connected to it. For example the first book was about a little girl who loved apples or something of that nature. I was interested in finding out what the puppets’ stories were, where they came from, why they look the way they did, or the reasons for the way they acted. Weeks later we finally finished all the letters of the alphabet and she brought out a bin full of books with simple sentences.

         I was already a proficient reader since my mom had acquired her own collection of Dr. Seuss books and taught me throughout each day of the prior weeks in class  when we were learning about the alphabet. I was already reading full sentences  and teachers were quite impressed with me until the following year. I was so excited for pre-K4, but the day they brought out some books for us to read, the teacher pulled me aside with a few other students and placed me in an ESL class. I had no idea why, even  though I grew up speaking Spanish at home it wasn’t even understandable since I focused more on English  , even then I  never spoke Spanish in school, and since I  was  a pretty proficient reader,  I was  quite confused for years trying to pinpoint the exact reason I was placed in ESL. I was pulled out of each of my English classes until my final years in middle school. Throughout that time I never fully understood grammatical concepts or the placement of commas, semicolons and em dashes since I had missed those key concepts that just kept preventing me from leaving the program. When I did eventually did leave I felt a sense of relief, knowing I could do well in English class and its’ settings which is something I’ve always known reconfirming that in high school, and hopefully college, college brings me a sense of relief that all the time I missed did not negatively affect my education.

       Reflecting on this now , I can see the broader significance and reality that many bilingual or immigrant children face similar realities based on the assumptions of their background/ home languages even if they are already proficient in English. This may cause the neglect of foundational lessons, self suspicion and feeling isolated in school. Having gone through this personally demonstrates to anyone that perseverance does pay off and that grammar and literacy do not arise naturally, but rather come with practice. Having this information any person can get rid of these barriers and train to feel confident in oneself and use it as a stimulus towards improvement.

      It is not only my narrative but it is a sort of pattern embroidered into many lives of other children. Imagine a child who is sitting in school, maybe his parents speak Tagalog or Arabic at home, is already reading chapter books, and one day he or she gets called aside, and given an ESL tag, without anybody questioning whether that tag will fit. That child is stitching grammar with one-half-heard lesson and wonders why they are always a step behind on matters like  semicolons or  run-on sentences. It is nothing that they are not capable of learning, but someone simply assumed that their background would be the shortcut to their capacity. Such an assumption has a deep root, it makes you wonder whether you are good enough, it makes each visit to a pull-out class a journey to nowhere. It is that silent form of loneliness that occurs where you sit in a room full of children and realize you are not sharing what they are experiencing. This has made me respond to challenges present in my life today in such a manner as to work to find clarity and meaning in everything I undertake in life. I have also been taught that I should challenge the assumptions and not allow early disappointments in life to determine the possibilities I can achieve. Those puppets and the stories they were part of, still remind me that I loved to learn a lot when I was still young, and I bring that interest with me, with a determination to learn new things and seize opportunities in College and beyond.