My First Time Away From My Family

After a short ten-minute walk home from school, when I finally arrived at my house, I flopped onto the couch. It was a Friday afternoon, and I was ready for the football game that night, and for the weekend to begin. My mom was sitting on the couch across from me and asked me how my day at school was. I described to her what had happened that day, and the stuff we did in my classes. As we get done talking about school, she inquired

The transition from elementary into middle school was tough, in fact I did not do well the first semester of that year. During these school years was unbeliebable the amount of people I met, especially my best friend. We used to play soccer a lot and ride bicycle all day long. Unfotunally, within those cheerful years my brother came to the US, which at the time felt like the worst thing that could've happened to me.

I went to school, except this time with a funny feeling, knowing this was the last time I would ever see any of them. All my friends and other family, I wouldn’t be seeing for a long time. Then the day came. We all woke up early that morning. My mom helped me and my brothers pack our bags and get ready for the flight. As a family we made our way to the airport with a drive that felt like it took a million years. Finally, we reached the airports and I was ready to collapse in a seat and go right to sleep.

As I began elementary school I was in ESL and in regular classes. My first language was Spanish but I also spoke the minimum of English. However, my speaking and understanding of English weren't sufficient enough to comprehend in class. Elementary school was hard for me because I was still not comprehending a lot even though my English improved. My parents tried their best to help me with schoolwork. It was until middle school my mother started to work. Without both my parents being there to help me I didn't know what to do. I knew that they would not always be able to help me. In order to take care of my

That first day of school that morning was filled with nerves, and heading into the school year.  I was ready as usual and as soon as the bus came, waved to my parents as usual. The bus ride

I had my cousins and aunts and uncles. I also had my grandparents from my dad’s side. So it was as if a part of home was coming with me. It was August so my cousins didn’t have to enter school until the 3rd of september, we had our fun but summer had to come to an end and they had to go to school. Of course my mom being the forgetful woman she is, forgot my transfer papers so I didn’t enter school until a week later. I remember my first day of school was awkward, I didn’t know anybody besides my cousin. Which I’m thankful for because she’s the one who made this situation a lot easier. She introduced me to some of her friends and that very same day I met many great friends. Some of which I still talk to, to this

It was that time of the year ,which was back to school, it was the day ,I got to meet my 8th grade teacher ,I was sweating and had butterflies in my stomach. It was coincidence to find my friend Sheyla at the parking lot. Sheyla said she has met her teacher ,but needed a few more supplies ,so she was just back from getting her last supplies. Sheyla’s family went with us to met my teacher ,and I was glad to see her because it was quite a while since I last saw her. Later, after we left Berkmar grounds,I went to Sheyla’s house and we hangout the rest of the day. It was the first day of school, usually I would be feeling nervous,but today I wasn't ,which was good because I didn't want have sweating hands and a racing heartbeat. I arrived at Berkamr and went straight to homeroom ,I found my seat and waited. My first day at school wasn't to bad because the only thing

We moved in with a new roommate in the Friendly neighborhood but luckily got to finish the year at Goshin. I started and finished my fifth grade year at Adams elementary. I spent my six grade year at roosevelt middle school that was the year that my uncle moved down from portland and started living with me my mom and our roommate. I finished sixth grade and moved on to seventh grade at roosevelt then halfway through my seventh grade year my mom decided to buy a house across town with my grandma that had just moved down for alaska. My uncle moved in with my grandma and we stayed with them for a little while, while we fixed up the house. Once we had moved in I transferred schools from roosevelt to kelly middle school where I finished my seventh and eighth grade years. I started my freshman year in high school even though I had a trouble reading until I was in fourth grade and was on an IEP till seventh I made it to high school and plan to go

I was born in Kerala, India and was raised in Chicago, IL. I came to America at the age of three hoping for a better future. My father came to America first, and he lived with my Aunt who had three sons. After two years my father saved enough money to bring my mom, sister, and I to the US. During this time he would work as a dishwasher at a nursing home to support my family. After a month of living with my Aunty and her kids my dad found an apartment to rent. Eventually, we moved into a tiny one-bedroom apartment with my family. That was the hardest time period for me due to language barriers. My sister and I started to learn English. However, my parents were struggling to learn a new language so we would have to go everywhere with them to translate. Another, difficulty that we faced was financial issues. At that time we were making ends-meet and we were scraping every penny that we got. Afterwards, my mom got her CNA license she started working two jobs when I was only four years old. Even till this day she is still working two jobs to support the

Soon enough preschool was over and here came our elementary school days. Everyone met many people in kindergarten. Many will be my friends throughout high school and beyond. Kindergarten was filled with arts and crafts, my portfolio, 2008 handprints, and stamped tee shirts. Suddenly kindergarten graduation was here, everyone was paired up and danced with a partner. First grade flew by and then came second grade with Ms. Foisy and Ms. Okabioshi. Ms. Okabioshi was one of the best teacher assistance we have ever had. Third and fourth grade with Mrs. Schuler and Ms. Ittes. These years were filled with warm fuzzies, a lot of reading and writing, and a lot of fun playing on the playground. The class watched Shilo and everyone hated the evil father. After that came fifth grade with Mr. Sifferman, also known as Millie’s cousin, he gave the hardest tests we have ever taken, but the most fun and memorable times we have had. After that year many people changed schools, I moved to California.

Since I came here my whole world change, the education in United State was different place to live and different language too. I had to start from the beginning . Math,science and history were a challenging classes for me, because in Spain were different than United States and the language was different too I used to lived in a city when all my classes were in other language I only used to speak Spanish with my family and some other friends. The most difficult class when I came to West New York was math even that I used to like math but when I came here I started to hate it because the way that I was used to it was wrong here. The problem was that I had to show work and they saw my work they told me that how did I did it that the way was weird and I had to learn that way that they do or they will give me a bad grade so I learned it was difficult but I did it. Science is my favorite class I think that is interesting to learn about it, but in middle school I had to study a lot to pass the class because I did not what were a lot of the vocabulary words. History was difficult but not as much that were math

Before long, I had started my first day of school and it had gone pretty badly. First, I had to spend over an hour getting everything set up and organized which made me miss my first class. Secondly,

Learning how to read and right I remember it like it was yesterday. I thought I would never be able to read and write as well as I wanted to do. I was homeschooled because I was on the gymnastics competition team, I was the youngest on there for a while. I used to train five to six hours a day, there for all the girls homeschooled but we all had to bring in our work on Friday to talk about what we had do and learned that week. I used to dread Fridays because I always felt behind because I was the youngest all the girls used to tell me that they were the same as me when they were my age. There was a teacher that came in on Fridays for English and math, she would always tell me I was fine, that I was at where I needed to be. My mom left the biggest

the day and English at night, but my transition was harder due to my poor foundations of the English language. I now had to speak, write, and read in English, when I preferred my native language, Spanish. Immaculate Heart Elementary School provided a tutor to help me read from the textbooks in my third grade class. I had difficulty communicating with the teacher and classmates. I felt embarrassed for not understanding English, and sad knowing that it was hard to speak with my Spanish accent. Even though I was placed in such an unfamiliar and difficult situation, I enjoyed the educational atmosphere. I felt safer in an environment where I had some individual attention. I began to write essays about various social studies related topics such as the 41st President of the United States and the Statue of Liberty. I recall spending a lot of my time thinking about the ideas I should mention in those essays, but I spent even more time trying to get those thoughts on lined paper. I wondered whether I was saying things the correct way. I felt behind compared to the other student in my class. I didn?t know the basics of grammar, like when to use ?is? and not ?are?, when everyone else had mastered that area of study. I struggled thinking in Spanish and

There are three extremely important events that shaped my view of life during this course. Firstly, when I was in this course around my third year, we decided to document our memories in a notebook. This was a notebook we carried around everywhere, and whenever something interesting or exciting happened, we would write it down. We got this idea from a teacher who did the same when he was a student in a similar course. It was a simple spiral bound black notebook, but every time someone said something entertaining or positive, we’d pick someone to write in it, and this person would record this in the notebook. This was something only my class did, and it made us feel extremely unique and close as a class. Before this, we weren’t really united and didn’t feel as close to one another—but as soon as we began this, we were a patriotic and supportive class. This journal was a transition between us being just a couple of distant girls to very close sisters; through this journaling, I felt united with my class and could confide in them with whatever I was going through. It was always extremely exciting for me as the youngest in the class to see my elder peers write about me, or something interesting about me. Writing our experiences down and keeping a record of our memories helped us keep it fresh, and at our party at the end of the year, we read what we’d written down as a class and laugh about it. As we went on to the fourth year, we tried to continue to do so, but the teacher who