Draft #2 of Literacy Narrative

Life as an immigrant is many times hard. Life as an immigrant, who does not speak the primary language spoken here in the U.S, is even more difficult. With my feet dangling off the airplane seat and looking out the small plane window, I only wondered how different my life would be like away from the motherland. Finally reaching the U.S, I could not ignore the weird gibberish the folks here were speaking. I furrowed my eyebrows at the weird sounds I was hearing not understanding it one bit. I can already see how communication would be difficult for me at this point.

These unusual street names I looked up at had me puzzled. Billboards had a weird combination of letters next to one another. I would try to pronounce them and would annoyingly give up. I once opened a Thomas and Friends book my cousins possessed and tried to read it. Now, the gibberish was coming out of MY mouth! “Chan chin chin chan”. I was making up sounds for the words I clearly could not read from the book. My cousins laughed and gave me strange looks as I was “reading”, almost resembling a babbling baby. To me, on the other hand, I was perfectly reading an English book and did not know of any hilarious mistakes I was making.

Starting school was difficult because the teachers would only speak to me in that weird language again. I raised my hand anytime they mentioned my name but was tight lipped for everything that wasn’t. I was not progressing in that class and the teachers quickly took notice. I confusingly looked at my other classmates as they engaged in full blown conversations that I was left out of. I tried reading books, but got the same reaction from my peers that I did from my cousins, laughter. It was then that the best decision for my education was taken; I was placed in a class with children who were just like me.

My teacher Ms. Izaguerre was a native Spanish speaker just like all of us. She would teach us our basic English lesson, but would scold us in Spanish. Her lessons and ways of teaching made me not only love her class, but learn new vocabulary words that quickly expanded my vocabulary. She had a certain care for her students because she knew she was once like us. If there was an area that I needed help in, Ms. Izaguerre did not hesitate to suggest a book that would help me. If there were nouns, adjectives, verbs that I could not quite understand, she would explain them thoroughly on the board. Ms. Izaguerre would quickly come to my side when she saw me struggling as we practiced for our New York State English as a Second Language Achievement Test (NYSESLAT), she put her hand over my shoulder and said “Concentraté, sabes la respuesta”. She encouragingly told me that I knew the answer and, of course, I found in myself that I could do it. Ms. Izaguerre was the first teacher I ever had and she clearly made a vast impact on me because she made me something many people are not; a bilingual individual.

I can now look back to my time in Kindergarten and still stand amazed at how fast I learned English. My vocabulary has broadened over the span of my grade, middle, and high school years and it continues to do so. Any new word that I would learn, I would try to incorporate into my everyday vocabulary like the word “nuisance”, which I first learned in the second grade. Although I was privileged enough to start going to school at a young age and my mind was able to grasp a new language so quickly, many other children who are also immigrants do not come to the U.S at such a young age and struggle in the process to learn English. I did struggle just a bit, but because of these experiences, I teach some English to my own family members whose second language is English. My family members were also others that were appreciative of Ms. Izaguerre because of the hard work that she out into not only her job, but to me. Ms. Izaguerre is the reason why I am able to communicate with many others and the reason why I am fascinated with the English vocabulary.