I had begun the first grade that September after arriving to the U.S.; like any other new student I was nervous. I arrived in this country at just 5 almost 6 years old. During that summer, my cousins would sit with me for at least an hour going over the letters of the alphabet and numbers. My parents enrolled me in a Catholic school that provided only English instruction. Everything was still new to me. I was in a classroom with about 25 other students. I never spoke up in class and my teacher never called on me. I did not want to sound dumb in front of the other students who were for the most part proficient in the language.
During those first few months of school, it was hard to comprehend anything the teacher or the other students were saying but I still followed along with the rest of the class. Simple questions like 1+1 were easy to answer but for other things I remained quiet and just listened. Repeatedly, in class we would work on sounding out words and differentiating between short vowel sounds and long vowel sounds. My teacher had a lot of patience with me, she saw how hard I was trying to learn the language. The new friends that I made in school were also helpful, even though half the
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I could communicate with my friends more effectively without having to worry about whether they understood. Still, my grades could have been better especially in reading and math. My mother felt that it was the right time to transfer to a public school because tuition cost increased and I was not getting the academic support I needed. I entered my new school in the fourth grade; I received help in reading comprehension and writing. At least three times a week I was taken out of my classroom for small group sessions. In the years that followed, my grades in literacy and writing had improved tremendously getting B’s on all my report