Sat in a chair surrounded by 35 plus students, hearing the loudness of the obnoxious kids, also known as the popular kids who didn't care, and everyone taking over the whole atmosphere of the class. Your voice either got heard once in a while or if you raised your hand because you wanted to participate.
Surrounded by learning about subjects that never made us truly think. No challenges that we would use outside of the real world. And it followed when one day we walked into a store and didn't care about the other person trying to speak our language but got stereotyped as someone who "couldn't speak English." High school and the world around us explained in a sentence.
However, stepping into a classroom of 12 kids who got their brains actually working into making it change by learning another language was the best choice one could make. Here I am, this is my 4th year of taking French (well it feels like 3.5 years) and I have now realized how much my classmates and I just want to be heard, understood, and accepted. Learning a new language is something one really sees the beauty of another culture and life in ways our parents, friends, and people, in general, can't seem to understand.
Through taking French, or if you have taken any language, you see how these people become a family. You create a room filled with true, authentic, and people who accept you messing up. Also, you come to a point where you agree that English is SO confusing. You get to see the good moments, and bad, and the moments we were brought to tears because we finally got that sentence that came out perfect when we spoke to our teacher or the head of the department. The small victories are the biggest in our eyes.
We get to play another role, enter into another part of our brain that becomes activated WHEN you learn a language. It's like we get to forget about our identity and create another one. We leave behind our worries and find our time diving into words and all the beauty that comes with it. We are heard by the one who teaches us and goes out of her or his way to help. Creates an activity for all of us, so not only we can grow together, but feel comfortable. And we get today by day see the growth our minds are capable to do. And we are amazed at what came out of it.
We finally get to be heard not only in a new language but in our truest selves every time we walk through that door. We broke out of that shell and found others just like us who finally saw our brains changing through this new language. Even if we want to stick the English marker into what we want to explain.
The people who we look up to always reassure us that we can do big things with what we are doing, and that's why whenever out in the real world we see something we thank the language we are learning because without it we wouldn't have realized our dreams, hopes, and wants. We wouldn't know what we have always wanted. It's hard to explain it to our family and some friends because they don't understand why.
And all I can say with that is "the reason why would be was because we found a voice deeper than the one we have, and it's changed and made us challenge ourselves to ways we would not have had if we just stook to English." We get to relate to a whole new set of people, we get to finally be heard in ways no one gets here in the life we live normally.
