I came to this country when I was around 6 years old  and even though I came here young, I always had a hard time with English. I would constantly perform below grade level in English classes and English was always my weakest subject.

       During 4th grade on a spring morning, my teacher was handing back some graded writing assignments. She plopped my paper on the table and came back as soon as she was done with handing out the entire stack. She crouched beside me and asked in an endearing tone “why are you spelling so many words wrong”. We were both looking at my paper at this point and I noticed multiple words underlined with red ink. I contemplated for a while, responding with a shrug and saying “I really don’t know but I  have always been writing like this.” My teacher, Ms.Hienrich, just smiled a little and called over Ms.Torre who wasn’t really a teacher but somewhat of an assisting teacher. After talking with Ms.Torre, Ms.Hienrich explained to me that it’s super important for me to first get the fundamentals right as she believed that I needed to review my letter sounds and she told me that Ms.Torre is going to help me with that.

         Ms.Torre accompanied me to the halls where we sat right next to the classroom door. She explained to me that we would split the letters so that we do some letters on one day and the following days I would both review and try to learn new letter sounds. This continued for about two weeks and I kind of found it enjoyable because I really noticed my growth. This is the first instance that I could remember of me actually enjoying English and not feeling embarrassed for being behind everyone else. In some cases when my classmates would go on bathroom breaks and pass by, they would  ask what I was doing and when I answered they were in a way supportive. By the end of the two weeks I didn’t fully master letter sounds and perfect my spelling but I was now able to sound out words slowly  to get the spelling right whenever I needed to. By doing this continuously I definitely improved my writing at least by a little bit.

I remember when I first came to America and started to learn English, I did learn the letter sounds but I think that my teacher back then tried to rush things and get me to at least start speaking English. This of course led to my fundamentals being unstable and caused me to write and even read below grade level. But I don’t think it was really her fault, I did join her classroom near the end of the year and by the next year I started to do work as everyone else and sometimes supplemented with classes with ENL classes. Through it all there have been many instances where I have completely lost hope in becoming a better writer but experiences like the one in the spring of 4th grade had given me the confidence to believe that it’s not hopeless. I began to think that as long as I continued to practice and write, I could really improve on not just my writing but also how I express myself in English. It wasn’t always easy though, at the beginning of every single school year it would take me a while to understand and implement new techniques or styles of writing but I would always ask for help from my teachers and with their support I would ultimately add new skills onto my toolbelt. I truly am lucky to have teachers like Ms.Hienrich throughout my academic journey who understood what I needed and went above and beyond to help me grow.

This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.