When I was younger I remember my mom getting me books to learn Spanish. In school, I was taught in bilingual classes, but it wasn't until third grade when it was removed. My mother was angry that the school had changed their way of teaching because she thought being bilingual was important. I was put into a program called English as a Second Language in the third grade, where I began to learn English. It wasn't until fifth grade where I was removed from the program because I knew English "well enough."
Growing up I never thought that I had difficulties learning two languages until I was in high school and realized it. Spanish was my first language and it's my native language. There were times that people said I had an accent whenever I talked and I was never sure how to feel about it. I wasn't sure if it was a good thing or a bad thing. I just thought that it defined who I was, a Latina.
It wasn't until college where I started to realize that categorizing me with an accent was not something I felt comfortable with. I was thankful that my mother raised me to learn more than one language and not have the mentality alike other parents that their children should only learn English. My mother always said, "The more languages you know, the more you are worth."
Sometimes it was difficult having to translate for my parents because there would be words I didn't know how to say in Spanish or in English. As I grew up, I began to lose the ability to speak Spanish well because I was no longer learning it in school. In school, I was only taught in English, and I never had a Spanish class again until sophomore and junior year of high school. At first, it was very difficult to have classes in Spanish because although I still spoke it, it was not as well as I thought. During that time, my parents would help me with my homework and it wasn't until I kept studying that my Spanish kept getting better.
Two years ago, I had the wonderful opportunity of traveling to China where I learned some Mandarin. I love learning about different languages, and I especially embrace my native and second language. In college, I became very comfortable with speaking in Spanish. Most of the time that's the language I talk in. The only times I speak in English are when I'm in classes, other than that, I speak Spanish most of the time and I love it. The past couple of months I have been in college has really helped me improve my Spanish fluency. I have decided to double major in Global Studies and Spanish with a minor in English as a Second Language, ESL.
Although there are some people who think ESL is bad, I want to do it. For some time, I thought it was bad too because it was only teaching me English and not helping me with my Spanish. I was being taught to speak English, but I wasn't taught about grammar. It was difficult, but I want to be able to teach students who do not have English as their native language that it is perfectly fine to not. I think it is very important that people are able to speak more than one language. For the future students I'll have, I want to teach them how important it is to still be able to learn their native language and at the same time learn new ones too, but to never forget their roots or where they came from.
