Essay 1

No Speak English

Do you remember when you were in first grade? I do, pretty well actually. I didn’t start school in The United States. I started school overseas actually. Before I came to the United States I lived in Bosnia. I lived in a small town and the school was small too. You would think that the school system over there is the same, well you are way off. Instead of practicing coloring, we practiced writing in cursive. I knew my multiplication table by the end of the first grade. In a school where you were graded for handwriting and grammar in the first grade, I did really well. I was the best in class, I only received one B and that was in arts and crafts, I was never good with modeling clay.

My parents always pushed me to do my best in school. They, but mostly my dad, knew I had the potential to be an excellent student and I was. He always made sure I had everything I needed for school. He always helped me do my homework and made sure I did it. If I had a dollar for every time he asked me, “Have you done your homework?” I would have enough to pay the next couple of years in college. Don’t try to get the idea that all my dad did was make me study, he would take time off work and play video games with me and take me to soccer games. He wanted me to live a normal life but he didn’t want me to waste my time doing nothing, so he always made sure I had something to do.  I was also enrolled in a Sunday school but for Muslims. Being able to read and write in Arabic in my religion is considered a great accomplishment, and thanks to my dad pushing me to learn it, I accomplished this.

            I stayed in the Bosnian school system for another year, this time it was harder; more books to read and they didn’t have pictures, which a kid over here in the second grade would probably freak out about. I was still the best student in the class and every quarter we had parent teacher conference. I loved going to them with my dad because I knew that he would be proud of me. After completing the second, grade my family decided to move to the U.S. I knew some English when I came here because over there, I had English as a foreign language class, which may sound weird over here. I wasn’t fluent in English when I started school I just knew basic things like “May I use the bathroom?” and my all-time favorite “No speak English!” which helped me the most. I was only good at math over here when I started because numbers are universal. I was put into the ESL program at our school to help me learn English. My dad also enrolled me in an afterschool program which I think helped me understand this foreign language the most.  

            By the third month of school, I was able to communicate with the other students and answer questions when the teacher asked. My dad still expected me to have good grades and a “smiley” face was good enough for him. I enjoyed reading books mostly because they were picture books, back in Bosnia the books I read had no pictures so I had to picture what was going on in the story myself.

I remember our third grade classroom was split in half, one part of the room was third grade and the other was the second grade. Each week we had an hour in which we split up into groups and read and corrected paragraphs for punctuation and spelling errors. Those days were the worst for me not the fact we had to do the corrections, it was more because I had been put in with the second graders. I knew what was going on and me being used to being the smartest kid in school at one time made me feel like segregation was back.  The fact that I wanted to be with the rest of my actual class made me study more and read more often.  I’m pretty sure I had read every Clifford and Dr.Seuss book our school library had. Eventually I had to step my game up and moved on to the Boxcar Children and the Goosebumps series books. My dad was really proud of me, by the end of the third grade, I was fluent in English and I had developed a love for reading books.