Personal Narrative: Spanish Schooling

Community One: Spanish Schooling

My first community is my Spanish schooling that I was engaged in from elementary school to sections of my high school education. Since this Spanish education took place in a homeschooling setting, my parents were my teachers the majority of the time. I also attended classes that were held in brick and mortar schools that would give me access to different teachers occasionally. The majority of my textbooks were in Spanish, and I was taught Spanish and English for grammar classes. During this period of time, my first language was Spanish. My Spanish textbooks were used for each of my core classes, and bilingual books were used in each English class that I took. I was in a Spanish speaking environment, so this

To communicate with my family and be able to learn from them, I needed to be able to understand their language and additionally later learned the struggles that they went through speaking Spanish when moving into English societies and discourse communities. The enculturation that I experienced in this group was being born into its culture. The Hispanic environment that I was in contrasted to the English world that I was going to be entering into. My family surrounded me with friends, family, and schooling that immersed me into the culture of the group that they were also a part of. My parents thought that it was important that I experience different cultures, and thus exposed me to at least four different languages and countless studies in my schooling. Despite this, I wasn’t enculturated into English speaking environments as much as I was with Spanish environments until I was at a much older age. My parents worked hard to make sure that I was well versed in math and science, especially since they believed that my language would not inhibit my communication in these fields as much as it could in other subjects like writing. Because of their past experiences in their daily life, they also knew that I would be able to gain respect and

I went into the community in high school. I was one of thirteen students in my grade, and the only student in my school who spoke Spanish. All of the textbooks that I used in school were English, and only one of my teachers was able to speak Spanish. I attempted to the best of my ability to enculturate completely into the community, but was shunned in some of the opportunities that other students seemed to be able to operate freely in. I was not able to write notes in class because I would write them in Spanish. Since these notes were in Spanish, the teachers believed that I was writing offensive things about them behind their backs. If my notes were in Spanish, they were taken to the Spanish teacher, who would look over them to make sure that the content pertained to my classes. My speech was often limited because I would spend time translating the words from Spanish to English in my mind. Towards the middle of my sophomore year I felt confident enough to give speeches in front of the class without feeling as though there was a gap in my communication. I was able to understand my math and science from the beginning of the year because the concepts for me transcended the barriers I had in language. I would often have to get help after class for topics that I was not able to keep up with in class because of my language barrier. While taking my English classes in the English high school, I realized that papers needed to be