Personal Narrative: Kindergarten

When I was just 4 years old I went to Funtastik Preschool and Daycare. I went there for an entire year. It was a very fun school. Usually in the mornings I would get dropped off with all the other kids and all the kids would get to play inside with toys. Then we would have breakfast. After breakfast we went outside and played on the playground. After the playground we went inside to have a nap. Most of the time after a nap we would go and watch a movie on the carpet. Then we would go outside once again. At the end of the day we would go back on the carpet and watch another movie and wait for our parents to arrive to pick us up.

The average kid goes to your average traditional school and learns as the average kid does. I look like your everyday average kid but I am not average. The average kid starts out in life meeting all the milestones, going to school, making friends, and moving on with their life in their average world. I, on the other hand, started out on day one not being average. I was born with a simple and common medical condition but because I was meeting all the milestones, like babies do, the doctor ignored my mom when she told them something was wrong. I was meeting all the milestones, except for one. I didn’t start talking when I was supposed to start talking. The doctor assured my mom repeatedly this was common in a fourth child because there were

I was only nine years old, the year 1991. I had to navigate from an English speaking classroom to a Spanish speaking home. From eight in the morning I was given instruction in English by my professors at school. After three in the afternoon at home I engaged in Spanish conversation with my mother, father, and siblings. When the summer vacation came around, it was back to speaking español only, and then I regained the Mexican accent that had faded away during the school year.

My entire family was born in Guadalajara, Mexico. After three and a half years of living there my family decided to seek a better future in The United States. My father would go to the United States back and forth to work and earn money to send to us in Mexico. Eventually my mother was able to get a visa and my brother along with my little sister had an alternate way into the United States. We lived in Dallas Texas and Atlanta Georgia before settling in Howard county Maryland in a very small apartment. Luckily we were doing pretty well with my dad being the only one knowing English at the time. My father was working two jobs and I was getting ready to start kindergarten. I was very excited because the education we would have received in Mexico was nothing compared to the education in Howard County. I was excited for what was to come, but there were disadvantages of knowing only Spanish. Being bullied because of my poor English had an impact on me. I was in completely separate classes learning things that were simple compared to the regular course. I was excluded from certain activities, field trips and assemblies. I was clueless at first though as I slowly learned the language I understood things a lot more.

I have been a preschool teacher, teaching mixed age children from 18 months to 5 years, for over 10 years. I started as a work study employee, while attending the Community College of Philadelphia in 2006, to a part-time teaching assistant while attending Temple University in 2010. This led me to a lead-teacher position after graduation and then to a program coordinator. I have developed effective working relationships with children in the past years. This position has helped me improve my teamwork and interpersonal skills by cooperating with other teachers in planning teaching materials according to the Reggio Emilia approach and by sharing teaching resources. I decided that working with children, understanding and assisting in their education,

New Year's eve was the first time meeting my Hispanic boyfriend's family, of course I had taken a few Spanish classes back in high school, but not even the most advanced class could have

I was thirteen when I started to see the negative effects of being part of the Hispanic culture. The teacher assigned the class to make a Powerpoint about their family and their culture. Initially I was excited to share my background to people in my classroom. As I walked home at the end of the day I kept thinking of interesting things to include,and I

My experiences working with children officially began in 2012 when I started working for One of A Kind Progressive Early Education. I worked with children of all ages, primarily toddlers and preschoolers. While working at One of A Kind, I assisted the lead teachers as much as possible. I helped develop daily routines of activities, lesson plans, nap, and toilet-training times that seemed most effective for the students. I worked with parents during pick up and drop off times to make sure they were happy with the schedule and care their child was receiving. I was in charge of maintaining a safe environment for the students at One of A Kind.

Like many people everyone wants to find their calling and figure out where they belong. My parents moved to the United States risking their lives on a boat from Haiti but soon separated while in america . My mom did a great job raising four kids on her own and I being the second child took part in raising my two younger siblings. In elementary school I struggled in many subjects but excelled in art, when I finally learned to read and went to middle school my grades were high enough to have honors reading and social study classes and even apa classes in highschool. I continued to excel in a lot of my classes, turns out I was smarter than I thought and all I need to do was learn to read and have people who took the time to teach me.

It was hour four. I glanced at the tiny digital clock on the dusty, outdated, desktop computer. “Five minutes left in free play!” I yelled over the jumbled sound of Mario Kart, xylophones and freeze dance. The daycare had almost a club atmosphere at this point as muffled dance music blasted through the speakers; the only partition between the high-energy fitness center and us was a thin wall of glass, littered with sticky handprints. There were currently thirty children ranging from ages 3 to 12 and it was up to me my coworker to watch all of them, do payments and update the roster. She was busy with the infants, leaving me to take care of everything else. Much like a general getting ready for war, I prepared myself. Sometimes, the room would have up to 40 kids in it at once, so I had to be an authoritarian. I knew I had it in me; I had practice using my voice working at the preschool.

I was progressing into my ninth grade year and I felt more nervous than a person on their first rushing rollercoaster. I had no friends in cloudless California, all of my former friends were all back in New York.

I learned to speak Spanish at twelve when my parents threw me in a Mexican public school. I travel on a sailboat with my family. I especially liked the candy wheelbarrows that men would roll around town, filled with all sorts of goodies. I loved walking down the touristy beached infested with men and women desperately calling for your attention in effort to sell you wool sarapes, woven bracelets and straw sombreros to hide from the fervent sun.

During Kindergarten in California my classmates and I was so happy to be out of school. During the summer, my Mom and brother and I went to Washington to visit my relatives. I got used to going to Washington for vacation, ever since we go to Washington I start crying and throwing a meltdown, but I got over it because, I love it going to be a great time. I even saw my other nephews and nieces. We took pictures, play games, watch TV, and even play outside. And then we celebrated my 7th birthday there during August, and I enjoy it. Throughout the ½ months in Washington. My dad visited us to see how is our vacation. We stayed over at our cousin’s house during the summer. The fun moment I had is that I get to go to the mall

Wilkerson. She was such a fun teacher. She was obsessed with Dr. Seuss and would always show us videos from School House Rock. I still remember the lyrics to those songs. I remember getting some kid in trouble for something I did, that year. When we were first introduced to subtracting with a bigger number on the bottom in the ones place, better barrow a bundle, the teacher gave us a worksheet without telling us anything about the topic just too see if we knew it. I was so excited because I thought I was going to be the smartest kid in the class and get all the problems on the worksheet right, but in the end I didn’t do it right at all and there was only one kid who did it right, and he’s sitting next to me as I’m typing

My first day of kindergarten was not a happy day for me. I was scared and wanted to go home. The environment was unfamiliar to me. Entering into kindergarten at the age of four is a normative event. I recall my mother giving me a kiss on the cheek, smiling at me and told me everything would be okay and then walked away. I did not cry; I just watched her walk away. What stood out the most for me, is that none of the children or teachers looked like me. I was the only African American in my kindergarten class. I had enough sense to know that something was different.