I struggled to learn Spanish and I know a lot of people including my friend Michael who had to retake Spanish numerous times to graduate. So, with that being said, I don’t believe everyone is even capable of learning a foreign language. People who oppose my opinion would say learning a foreign language is not that hard. The truth is that anyone can learn another language. It just takes dedication and hard work or maybe it’s that you had a bad instructor and you feel like you don’t have an aptitude for learning another language.
She would always call me outside of class asking what’s the problem with you today, and I would say nothing and she would answer back with it must be a reason you are disturbing class. With my Spanish teacher there was always something that I was not during right, and I hated that I felt she always singled me out in the class. The big turning point in this class is when we had to do a family presentation in Spanish, and she said if you had a relative that was taking the class you could do the same presentation. So when the time came do the presentation my little brother who was already taking the class had did the project and completed and received a grade of 100. When it came time for me to present the project she had to told me my brother did a great job let’s see how well you do.
I still remember students from school would make fun by not knowing how to read, but they never knew I was struggling with both English and Spanish reading and writing. My parents are both from Guatemala; they came to the U.S at a very young age. My father was the only one to go to school. My mother did not attend school because it was difficult by her immigration status. When I was little, Spanish was not my mother's first language, so when she wanted to help me with reading and to write in English, she had a difficult time.
My whole life I struggled with writing. In my case, writing wasn’t my favorite part of my day. I’m Hispanic, my first language at home is Spanish. Growing up here was really hard as my parents were immigrants and really weren't informed of help the state provided like preschool. Kindergarten was the worst.
Children that have emigrated from other countries such as Mexico, Brazil, or Spain naturally speak Spanish because that is the language they were raised with. As these students begin attending school here in America they struggle in the classroom due to their lack of understanding. This issue was the basic foundation for the creation of English Language Learner programs in the United States. The National Education Association has been working to engage in research and programs to reduce this learning gap in the country (NEA, n.d.). The problem is, many parents in this area, the West Valley of Phoenix, Arizona, do not speak, or struggle with, English so naturally they use Spanish at home.
I took ELD courses up until my junior year in high school. Most of my friends tested out, so they would tease me for not testing out and receiving an “F” in the course. At the time, I reject the dominant culture for not accepting me as a Mexican-American. In fact, being in ELD courses made me feel less American. I still struggle with reading and writing both in English and Spanish because I am stuck in between two cultures.
I began to understand that all the name calling and cursing was directed towards me. The saddest realization of this point in my lifetime is I was subconsciously getting used to it. All the excitement I owned about school perished quickly when the teachers would see the way my classmates would treat me, yet they did nothing. After a while, my patience ran out, so I became an introvert and my wardrobe changed from girly to the stereotypical “tom-boy”. I stopped looking for ways to get involved in school because of a bully named Cuevas.
For two years I had to deal with that horror of fcat reading. My writing fcat I passed it right away but for reading I had to try multiple times, therefore, as you can imagine I failed the act my frist ime, it was unbeliable I wanted to getit over with but I had to repeat it one more time and I passed it. I think the major factor on my reading is the Spanish, my friends and I had the same problem but past it the second time. Other kind of a bad experience with highschool was math. Since I was little I have always struggle with math, and it’s actually weird because all my family has study math careers and they even have business but I was the only kid who wouldnt like to go to work at the family’s business.
Their remarks about my clothing and the color of my eyes and hair, surprised me. I was not upset because they were Hispanic. I am sure that I would have been mad if an Anglo-saxon girl would have talked bad about a hispanic guy or girl. Another time hispanics thought I was Anglo-saxon, was when my best friend's dad got me a job at his company. The first day he showed me around and majority of the workers were hispanic; once again they all looked at me again.
Because I spoke English without an accent and was known as Julie, people assumed I was American. This meant that I was often privy to their real feelings about those “damn Iranians.” It was like having those X-ray glasses that let you see people naked, except that what I was seeing was far uglier than people’s underwear. It dawned on me that these people would have probably never invited me to their house had they known me as Firoozeh. I felt like a fake.” Just as Dumas is feeling more American the Iranian Revolution comes around and conflicts her. Something happening thousands of miles away and geopolitical is directly affecting