Personal Narrative: My First Day Of An American School

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

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

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