Reflective Essay Of Bilingual Education

Being born and residing my entire life in the bordertown city of Laredo, Texas, most of my life has been spent surrounded by hispanic culture. Both of my parents come from hispanic roots, and were unable to fluently speak or understand English. Consequently, as a child, I was not taught nor was I able to practice how to become fluent in English anywhere other than at school. Not being able to speak english posed as an enormous problem for the majority of my social and academic life at school, but despite feeling dismayed, I refused to give up. My mother, born in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, initially came to the United States planning to finish her high school education and immediately go back to finish college in Mexico. Furthermore, my father, …show more content…
Around second grade, our classes began getting separated into two categories: the students who mainly spoke spanish, and the students fluent in english along with bilinguals. Of course, I felt comfortable around people who spoke spanish, but as a child I would notice most of my friends who were in the “normal” classes would get small prizes which allowed me to have something to look forward to achieving. Not only that, but a few classmates who had the same interests as me, such as playing video games, only spoke English, therefore, I wanted to do my best to speak to them in a language they would be able to understand. Although that doesn’t seem like a big reward now, it motivated me enough to practice writing and talking english on my own time which eventually led for me to accomplish my goals of getting switched to the ‘regular’ classes and befriending my classmates. Unfortunately enough, I got a different teacher which wouldn’t give out prizes, but I didn’t let that bring me down and still tried my best to excel in