Personal Narrative: My First Day Of An American School

1105 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: English immersion teaching

My Beginning
The bell rang and immediately froze. It was my first day of fourth grade and I was terrified. It wasn’t only that I was scared of attending a new school but also that this was my first time attending an American School. I was born in Delano, California but we had moved to Mexico when I was about 1-year-old and didn’t return until I turned 8 so all I knew to speak was Spanish. Now I was in a total new country and I didn’t understand anything around me. Everything looked different and I wanted to go back home so bad but I knew I couldn’t.This was my new home and I had to get used to it. That summer my mom signed me up for school and I was so excited because I had always loved school. I was so happy to finally go back to school because …show more content…

Honestly the only English I did know was what the shows Arthur and Spongebob had thought me so it wasn’t very useful. “My name is ana”, I repeated this over and over for the whole 10 min walk to school. I wanted it to be perfect because I knew the teacher would ask me. Once we finally got there we waited outside the classroom till the bell rang. When It finally did, the door opened and Mrs. Bowers came out. She was a tall woman with big fluffy blonde hair. She gave me the friendliest smile and said, “What’s your name”? I was so happy because I knew how to respond to that so I practically yelled, “my name is ana”. She smiled and asked me something else which obviously I didn’t understand so I just stood there quiet. I immediately felt embarrassed and looked down. “No ablas Ingles”? She asked, I knew just from listening to her accent that she didn’t really speak Spanish so I was happy she had at least tried, I looked up shook my head and told her,”no”. She told me it was ok, took my hand and lead me into the …show more content…

Bowers was teaching but every day at 10 am I had to leave to another class for my English classes. Mr. Ramirez was my tutor for these classes. He was a short heavy hispanic man who could speak perfect spanish which I loved because we could actually communicate. The classes were like I was in kindergarten all over again. They taught me the alphabet and how to pronounce words. I ended up loving the language and I wanted to learn more. I wanted to go back to class and be able to interact with the other kids, answer questions, and actually understand what was going on. I began to go to the library so I could learn to read on my own. I started with the easy books with pictures and as my English classes progressed I went to harder books. I would go home and study the alphabet and the little note cards with words I couldn’t pronounce. I had made it my mission to learn English and that was what I was going to do. Day by day I began to understand more and more and that made me keep on trying. Eventually by the middle of the year I started talking, I understood what she was asking and I could answer back. Everything started making sense around me. The posters on the wall finally made sense and the gibberish had stopped. Everything was clear again, my hard work had paid

Show More
Related

  • Circumstance Obstacle Or Conflict In Your Life

    578 Words  | 2 Pages

    It was the fall of 2010 and little did I know that my world was about to change drastically. We had moved back to Kenosha, Wisconsin in 2008 after living in Mexico, and I was starting to enjoy my life in the dairy state. My 6th Grade classes had just started at Bullen Middle School. It was right at this time when my world seemingly got flipped upside down. My parents had a family meeting and informed my siblings and me that we were moving to a small Iowa town called Orange City. I had feelings of nervousness, excitement, and sadness all mixed together.

    Read More

  • Learning English in the United States

    1011 Words  | 3 Pages

    When I first came to this country, I wasn’t thinking about the language, how to learn it, use it, write, how I’m going to speak with people who are next to you and you want to talk to them. My first experience was in Veterans School, it was my first year in school here in United States, and I was in eight grades. The first day of school you were suppose to go with your parent, especially if you were new in the school, like me. What happened was that I didn’t bring my dad whit me, a woman was asking me a lot of questions and I was completely loss, I didn’t have any idea of what she was telling me and I was scare. One funny thing, I started cry because I fell like frustrate, I didn’t know no one from there. Someone seat next to me, and ask me in Spanish what was wrong and I just say in my mind thanks God for send me this person, then I answered her that I didn’t know Engl...

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Mother Tongue

    1459 Words  | 3 Pages

    Many people have gone through what I went through, which is not knowing English when arriving to the United States. Tan wrote a story about her mother called “Mother Tongue” in which she describes her experience with her mother and

    Read More

  • Personal Narrative: My Experience As An Immigrant

    502 Words  | 2 Pages

    My mother would occasionally take me to work with her at the nail salon while sitting at her station I would notice how rudely customers would treat her due to her lack of English. At that point, I realized that my mother did not sacrifice everything to be ridiculed all because she could not speak English. A sense of determination washed over me. With the aid of my ESL class, in addition, to listening to other people’s discourse of the language, I gradually became fluent in the glorious English language. While learning English, it sent me on an unforgettable journey each step I took felt like I was paving my own pathway to success. After years of feeling un-American, I was committed to teaching and changing myself with knowledge, soon enough, learning the English language allowed me to adapt to my environment. Growing up as an immigrant kid, I lusted for eloquence and fluency after discovering the significance and strength of communication.

    Read More

  • Language Barriers: My Middle School Experience

    661 Words  | 2 Pages

    More importantly though, Dominic’s carefree attitude taught me not to be too self-conscious about my language difficulties. Because of him, I began talking to people again and tried my best to tell stories, crack jokes, and ask questions, even when I did not always understand the answers. My English speaking abilities began to flourish as I now considered my vocabulary to be a tool box used to make myself noticed. Soon, I was known as the "Foreign Kid" around school, a title I was oddly proud of. People started recognizing me in the halls, I made new friends, I talked as much as I could, and eventually I became

    Read More

  • Personal Narrative: My First Day In College

    202 Words  | 1 Pages

    According to the College Health website, “No one is immune from stress, but those entering the ivory towers of college are particularly vulnerable to it.” Attending college for the first time gave me a feeling of displacement, nonetheless, I maintained my sense of priority, I am here to learn, here to excel, and here to focus on my objective.

    Read More

  • Challenges Of Immigrants

    407 Words  | 1 Pages

    I clearly remember my first day in an American school— a little thirteen-year-old boy, who was shy to speak and tried to avoid any questions. Some of my classmates understood that English was my third language and tried to support and encourage me. However, others

    Read More

  • College Admissions Essay - A Willingness to Overcome Differences

    877 Words  | 2 Pages

    When we first started meeting, I saw a forbidding wall of words that I thought had to come down if a bond of friendship was to grow. The words that bring me such exhilaration and such rousing exchanges of ideas in English turned ornery and cantankerous in Spanish. Talking to Amalia, I was careful to bring up topics that I thought my Spanish could handle without too many searches through the dictionary Amalia and I kept between us like a life vest we had to share. Despite that, I often found myself staring at a wall of words, stranded in a maze, with the right words eluding me, defying me, mocking me from where they hid. The words turned me into a blushing, stammering nitwit. I used exaggerated hand gestures and facial expressions. I got gender and number wrong much of the time, unaccustomed as I was to having to think about that in English.

    Read More

  • The Passing of Time Illustrated in White's, Once More to the Lake

    1077 Words  | 3 Pages

    Once we decided on a day, I began to wonder what it was going to be like to go back to a place that I had not been in 7 years. As we approached the building, memories started to flash through my mind, what it was once like to not have a care in the world. From that point on, it was just thought after thought of how things used to be. How the cafeteria seemed like the biggest room ever, the playground was a place of endless amounts of fun, and getting a “pink slip” was the worst punishment in the world. Going back to a place where I spent most of my childhood caused me to reflect on how things had changed since I left there, and what type of person I had become.

    Read More

  • Personal Narrative: My Hmong Family

    1715 Words  | 4 Pages

    I came from a first generation Hmong family whose parents knew minimal English. I was three years old when we immigrated to America. I hardly remember anything at the time. My parents and older sisters were unfamiliar with the English language, so help was always needed from others. As we settled into our lives in America, things became more familiar and my sisters and I were able to help my parents out more. We went to school and learned the English language and were speaking a different language other than Hmong in the house. Eventually, my parents decided to learn English and they were attending classes from a Hmong community in Sacramento. Though, this was not for long, my father did not want my mother to attend classes anymore and to

    Read More

  • Personal Narrative: What I Learned To Learn Spanish

    836 Words  | 2 Pages

    I was taught how to read in Spanish by my early childhood teachers. They gave me assignments to take home and practice to become

    Read More

  • Personal Narrative Essay: Learning A New Language

    1120 Words  | 3 Pages

    When I first started school, I really didn’t know any English. It was hard because none of the kids knew what I was saying, and sometimes the teachers didn’t understand what I was saying. I was put in those ELL classes where they teach you English. The room they would take us to was full of pictures to teach us English, and they would make us sit on a red carpet and teach us how to read and write. When I would go back to regular class, I would have to try harder than the other students. I would have to study a little more and work a little harder with reading and writing if I wanted to be in the same level as the other kids in my class. when I got to third grade I took a test for my English and past it I didn’t have to go to does ELL classes anymore because I passed the test, and it felt great knowing that I wouldn’t have to take those classes no more.

    Read More

  • Reflective Essay: The Role Of Culture In Shaping Us As Individuals

    1623 Words  | 4 Pages

    I remember my first day at the bus stop, when this very handsome guy approached me and said “Good morning, you must be new…What’s Up?” At that momement I kept looking up thinking…”Gosh I don’t really see anything up there…what is he referring to?” His name was Michael and he kept repeating the phrase “What’s up” thinking maybe I didn’t hear him. All I remember is turning red in my face and using the same phrase I had told myself many times that I was never going to use… “I don’t speak English.” When we moved here I told myself I was going to try my best however I wasn’t going to be like another one of those foreigners you see in the movies that move to a different country and make no attempt to learn the language. I also told my self that I was going to repeat every word that I heard in my brain and then later using the dictionary to find out what that word meant.

    Read More

  • My Bilingual Classroom

    660 Words  | 2 Pages

    In first grade, I quickly excelled in reading, so I would be taken out of my bilingual classroom and be placed in an English-speaking classroom for an hour each day. Third grade came and I was no longer in a bilingual classroom, but an all English-speaking one. I felt as if I were in limbo because my English wasn’t perfect, and at the same time, my Spanish was becoming rusty because I wasn’t immersed in it daily anymore.

    Read More

  • Teaching English Essay

    1466 Words  | 3 Pages

    Growing up learning and speaking English has been something that was difficult for me at first but then came easy, but that was not the case for my mother. She spent her whole life speaking Spanish, so when she decided to take English learning classes it was challenging. However, she had me to help her throughout her struggle. I helped her complete her homework and assignments. We would also go to the library to check out easy level reading books to have her read to me. I would correct her English when it was wrong and do all I could to boost her confidence. It took me a while to understand and figure out what the best way to teach her was, but it was a fun experience for the both of us. Teaching her English was difficult because things that

    Read More

More about Personal Narrative: My First Day Of An American School

Open Document