Week 5: Look Out For The Hormigas!

The first time that I felt good about my language abilities was when I was transferred to a bilingual class in my first grade. I’ve mentioned before that when I started off first grade I was placed in a class that only used in English so I was struggling. I remember being in that classroom and not having a clue of what was going on or how to do any of the work. I would start to freak out because I would see that everyone in the class was doing the work just fine and I was the only one looking at other people’s paper or asking them questions. Being in that class and believing that I was the only one struggling made me feel like I was stupid. Even when I would hang out with the kids from the class I couldn’t communicate with them clearly. There was a moment when I saw a lot of red ants next to me I said out loud “Look out for the hormigas.” All the kids were looking at me like I was crazy but when I pointed at the ants they all understood me. One day when the class was watching a Pinocchio movie (that wasn’t made by Disney) the teacher took me outside with all of my stuff and walked me to another classroom. I was told that I was being placed in the new class because it would be better for me.

At first I was mad because I wasn’t going to be with my friends anymore and because I wasn’t going to finish watching the weird Pinocchio movie. So in my first day of class I noticed that the teacher was talking in Spanish and English and so were all the other kids. When we would do activities in the classroom I had no problem understanding what we were doing and I was participating a lot. When we would focus on the English aspect of the classroom activities, it felt like everything was going at my pace. I started to become really close to all of the kids in the classroom because we were all in the same situation and had a lot of things in common.

In this class my language abilities were used to their full potential and they were being improved. I was learning more about Spanish and improving my English with a lot of kids that were just like me. That class made me feel important because I had the knowledge of two different languages. It helped me believe that I can put two different things together and that they can coexist.