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My First Day At School

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I hold back a flood of tears, as I reluctantly walk up the unfamiliar block-like steps of the mustard yellow bus, while waving my mother goodbye. I choose an empty, patched up seat close to the bus driver. I can hear the jumbled up voices of many others on the bus, but I cannot understand a single word. I sit alone with my mouth sealed shut with a lump forming in my throat, and I cannot help but feel like the black sheep of the family. This feeling only worsens as I arrive to school, the building with small hallways, white walls, and the scent of pencil shavings and hand sanitizer. I long to play with the rest of the energetic children, but I stay put as I know I won’t understand them and they won’t understand me.
Up until the first day of kindergarten, my whole life had been in Spanish. I did not know a single ounce of English prior to then. Of course, the school did make accommodations for students like myself by placing us in ESOL classes. However, these classes, in which we were taught only basic English such as greetings, were no match for what would seem like an advanced concept for students with a very limited English vocabulary. And so, the nightmare commenced.
I vividly remember sitting at the table in Ms. Allred’s classroom, biting my nails, while staring blankly onto the paper with the letters S-P-A-G-H-E-T-T-I and of a dish of food I had never seen or heard of before. The directions were to write the number of syllables in the word, spaghetti. I must have taken

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