Painful and Pleasuarble Memories

Things can be both painful and pleasurable at the same time. They help us in two different ways because we learn from them and we also see how we can use them for our convenience. One thing that really was both painful and pleasurable was when I was put in an English only class.

I was always in ESL, which was a program for kids who were thought to only be able to speak Spanish and no English. I think that when I was put in this I was really happy. I felt that I did not want to be put to the side anymore with the other kids who spoke a lot of Spanish like I did. I was finally able to share with all my classmates what they were being taught. I remember that even my parents complained to the school principal so that they could put my in a class with children my age who only spoke English. Another thing that I was able to experience with this was that now I could learn to speak more English than what I could.

I remember that my dad was the one who took the initiative to speak to my teacher and ask her to put me in an English only class. The day of my parent-teacher conference was when he talked to my second grade teacher. I could still remember sitting next to him and as they were speaking of how well I was doing he said," I do want to talk about something that has to do with my daughter's learning skills". It was surprising for me because I felt that he finally said something so that I could be a part of my classmates. He then said to my teacher and it is something that I never forget because he said it to another one of my siblings teachers. This is what it was, "I want my daughter to be in an English only class because if I wanted her to learn Spanish then I would teach it to her at home". M teacher understood and said that she would try to start by giving me homework in English. Then he said," I send her to school to learn English because Spanish is taught at home." This was the start of a new future for me which was to start doing everything in English.

Speaking English was something also painful because I felt that my other classmates put me down. They did not call me names, but they did look at me funny because I now was at their same level. I was not at their level before so even though I really had no accent, I did do something that was not expected of me before. I believe that what I felt was anger because it was not fair that they did not like me for being able to share with them what I wanted to be able to share with them.

One thing that I remember I would do now that I was in English only class was read out loud to the class. I think that because this was not expected of us Spanish speaking kids the other kids did look at us funny. When I read out loud my teacher encouraged me to really keep reading because she liked when I participated. Also now instead of separating us from the English only kids, now they had to join us in our circle and spent more time with us. I know that this bothered them because they always thought that they were superior to us.

Sometimes we are able to experience new things but we don’t always receive the rewards that we would like from the people around us. I think that I was able to grow as a person with this experience because I was able to understand that all the people that we consider our friends really are not. I not only learned to speak a more fluent English, but I also learned to be able to choose whom my friends really were and know if I could trust them or not.