Part I. Introduction
Personal History and Goals
Personal History and Goals
The Early Years
My first language experience.
I can still remember my first experience with language, or, at least, recognizing that there was more than just the language that I could speak. I was in Ms. Wilson’s first grade classroom at Moore Elementary School. I remember her classroom because it was located on a corner of the school building and the best part of the playground was at the bottom of the hill, on the opposite side from where her classroom was. It was always a long run to recess and an even longer run on the way back to the classroom afterward. It was in that classroom on the first day of school when I met my new best friend. Her name was Lucía Paruelo and she was from Argentina. I did not know where she was from until a while later, but that did not matter. The only thing I needed to know then was that she was nervous about being in school because she could not understand anyone; but she had pretty brown eyes and I knew that she needed a friend.
Ms. Wilson tried the best she could to explain to me that Lucía did not speak English. English? What is English? I remember thinking. I was told that Lucía moved from somewhere far away so her father could attend the university and Lucía was very shy and scared being in this new place. Moore Elementary was located very close to the international housing for students at Colorado State University, so it was the most diverse elementary school in the city. We did not need to communicate much that first day because we could run, laugh, and play in the same language. When I went home that evening after school, I told my parents I had learned a new word, amigo. I realize now that I should have used the feminine amiga, but I was not as worried about grammar then as I am now. On that day I learned my first word in a foreign language, it was the day my eyes were truly opened to the world around me, and it was the start of my newfound respect for the English language.
I remember watching Lucía learn English both at school and at her home where I went with my younger sister to play with her and her sister after school and on weekends. It was such a great feeling, being welcomed in to a culture and home so different from my own. At first, it seemed like Lucía had a lot of trouble with school because she could not understand the teacher or her friends, and she would become frustrated or embarrassed. She met with one of the bilingual ESL teachers at the school a few times during the week for help with her schoolwork, which definitely seemed to help. I cannot remember the day that Lucía and I could converse without any stumbles or roadblocks because to me it seemed like we could always communicate, but the one thing I realized was that she had changed somehow and I felt almost proud to have been part of her growing and learning to communicate in a new way. This feeling of being able to help someone learn and grow was one of many moments in my childhood and teenage years that led me down the path of choosing education as my focus in college.
Continuing Education
The moment I realized I could make a difference.
When I returned to school in the fall of my sophomore year of college, I was enrolled in a course called “English Language for Teachers I.” It was a requirement for my degree and it seemed like a good plan to take it early in the program. (This turned out to be a not-so-great-idea, but that is a story for a different kind of personal essay.) The professor was intimidating and while a few people acted as though they knew what was happening, I rarely felt as if I had any idea what was going on in class, and I was generally afraid to speak or ask questions. One of the requirements of the class was one of two decisions. I cannot remember the first as I chose the second option, volunteering in an ESL program at one of the area schools. I signed up to work with the ESL program at Poudre High School once a week for the semester. My duties involved working one-on-one with students or in small groups working on anything from greetings to body parts to helping them with their homework. The students were mostly Mexican, whose parents were here to work, although there were a few other students from other countries like Korea and Japan. By the end of the term, I was going at least three times a week for a few hours in the morning whenever I had time. It was amazing to see these students learning how to communicate with not only me, but also the other students in the class in an entirely new way.
While I had already decided that I wanted to be a high school Language Arts teacher, I realized that there was something else I might be interested in doing. These students needed more than guidance and some materials; they needed encouragement and someone else other than themselves to believe in them. I had a thought implanted in my mind from this experience, and I knew it was not going to just disappear unless I did something about it.
Coming to Hawai‘i Pacific University
Earning a Master’s degree had never been something I had considered before moving to Hawai‘i. I received my teaching license for the state of Colorado, but moved to Hawai‘i to be with my husband who is stationed here in the Navy. While I had briefly considered trying to get a job with the Hawai‘i DOE, so many people who had had bad experiences with the public education system here urged me to reconsider, and ultimately I changed my mind. It was then I decided to return to school. I had been working with young children for years at 24 Hour Fitness and I considered getting a Master’s in elementary education to go along with my BA for secondary English. While researching schools and programs, I remembered the feeling I had when working with the ESL students a few years before and decided that maybe I needed to revisit that feeling, it was then that I found the MATESOL program at Hawai‘i Pacific University.
Looking to the future.
While I have enjoyed my time at HPU and within the MATESOL program, unlike my peers I will not be travelling the world and teaching students in foreign countries in foreign classrooms to speak English. I will stay in the United States, teaching students in classrooms foreign to them how to communicate so they may learn more about the language of the country in which they now live. I have also realized that while I enjoy working with many different people who have been drawn together to explore the US and practice their English in stress-free environments, it is not where I want to be. My real passion is with the students in the public schools who struggle every day with headaches and heartache to get through all their classes so that they may graduate high school and get a job or attend a university. I want to give these students hope. I want them to know that someone other than just themselves and their parents believes in them and wants them to succeed. I want to share my love of celebrating cultures and ideas different from my own with people I know can relate.
Although I have not thought much about getting a doctorate, it is not something that I have dismissed entirely. I know that I do plan to continue my professional development by continuing to stay up-to-date with the current teaching trends and with technology. I believe it is important for educators to stay ‘on top of their game’ in regards to what they do in their classroom as times and students are always changing and new research is continuing to change the way things should be done in this field.
My love of teaching, learning, and language has brought me to this moment and I can look back on all of it and thank my childhood friend, Lucía, for being the catalyst to me finding my place in the world.
My first language experience.
I can still remember my first experience with language, or, at least, recognizing that there was more than just the language that I could speak. I was in Ms. Wilson’s first grade classroom at Moore Elementary School. I remember her classroom because it was located on a corner of the school building and the best part of the playground was at the bottom of the hill, on the opposite side from where her classroom was. It was always a long run to recess and an even longer run on the way back to the classroom afterward. It was in that classroom on the first day of school when I met my new best friend. Her name was Lucía Paruelo and she was from Argentina. I did not know where she was from until a while later, but that did not matter. The only thing I needed to know then was that she was nervous about being in school because she could not understand anyone; but she had pretty brown eyes and I knew that she needed a friend.
Ms. Wilson tried the best she could to explain to me that Lucía did not speak English. English? What is English? I remember thinking. I was told that Lucía moved from somewhere far away so her father could attend the university and Lucía was very shy and scared being in this new place. Moore Elementary was located very close to the international housing for students at Colorado State University, so it was the most diverse elementary school in the city. We did not need to communicate much that first day because we could run, laugh, and play in the same language. When I went home that evening after school, I told my parents I had learned a new word, amigo. I realize now that I should have used the feminine amiga, but I was not as worried about grammar then as I am now. On that day I learned my first word in a foreign language, it was the day my eyes were truly opened to the world around me, and it was the start of my newfound respect for the English language.
I remember watching Lucía learn English both at school and at her home where I went with my younger sister to play with her and her sister after school and on weekends. It was such a great feeling, being welcomed in to a culture and home so different from my own. At first, it seemed like Lucía had a lot of trouble with school because she could not understand the teacher or her friends, and she would become frustrated or embarrassed. She met with one of the bilingual ESL teachers at the school a few times during the week for help with her schoolwork, which definitely seemed to help. I cannot remember the day that Lucía and I could converse without any stumbles or roadblocks because to me it seemed like we could always communicate, but the one thing I realized was that she had changed somehow and I felt almost proud to have been part of her growing and learning to communicate in a new way. This feeling of being able to help someone learn and grow was one of many moments in my childhood and teenage years that led me down the path of choosing education as my focus in college.
Continuing Education
The moment I realized I could make a difference.
When I returned to school in the fall of my sophomore year of college, I was enrolled in a course called “English Language for Teachers I.” It was a requirement for my degree and it seemed like a good plan to take it early in the program. (This turned out to be a not-so-great-idea, but that is a story for a different kind of personal essay.) The professor was intimidating and while a few people acted as though they knew what was happening, I rarely felt as if I had any idea what was going on in class, and I was generally afraid to speak or ask questions. One of the requirements of the class was one of two decisions. I cannot remember the first as I chose the second option, volunteering in an ESL program at one of the area schools. I signed up to work with the ESL program at Poudre High School once a week for the semester. My duties involved working one-on-one with students or in small groups working on anything from greetings to body parts to helping them with their homework. The students were mostly Mexican, whose parents were here to work, although there were a few other students from other countries like Korea and Japan. By the end of the term, I was going at least three times a week for a few hours in the morning whenever I had time. It was amazing to see these students learning how to communicate with not only me, but also the other students in the class in an entirely new way.
While I had already decided that I wanted to be a high school Language Arts teacher, I realized that there was something else I might be interested in doing. These students needed more than guidance and some materials; they needed encouragement and someone else other than themselves to believe in them. I had a thought implanted in my mind from this experience, and I knew it was not going to just disappear unless I did something about it.
Coming to Hawai‘i Pacific University
Earning a Master’s degree had never been something I had considered before moving to Hawai‘i. I received my teaching license for the state of Colorado, but moved to Hawai‘i to be with my husband who is stationed here in the Navy. While I had briefly considered trying to get a job with the Hawai‘i DOE, so many people who had had bad experiences with the public education system here urged me to reconsider, and ultimately I changed my mind. It was then I decided to return to school. I had been working with young children for years at 24 Hour Fitness and I considered getting a Master’s in elementary education to go along with my BA for secondary English. While researching schools and programs, I remembered the feeling I had when working with the ESL students a few years before and decided that maybe I needed to revisit that feeling, it was then that I found the MATESOL program at Hawai‘i Pacific University.
Looking to the future.
While I have enjoyed my time at HPU and within the MATESOL program, unlike my peers I will not be travelling the world and teaching students in foreign countries in foreign classrooms to speak English. I will stay in the United States, teaching students in classrooms foreign to them how to communicate so they may learn more about the language of the country in which they now live. I have also realized that while I enjoy working with many different people who have been drawn together to explore the US and practice their English in stress-free environments, it is not where I want to be. My real passion is with the students in the public schools who struggle every day with headaches and heartache to get through all their classes so that they may graduate high school and get a job or attend a university. I want to give these students hope. I want them to know that someone other than just themselves and their parents believes in them and wants them to succeed. I want to share my love of celebrating cultures and ideas different from my own with people I know can relate.
Although I have not thought much about getting a doctorate, it is not something that I have dismissed entirely. I know that I do plan to continue my professional development by continuing to stay up-to-date with the current teaching trends and with technology. I believe it is important for educators to stay ‘on top of their game’ in regards to what they do in their classroom as times and students are always changing and new research is continuing to change the way things should be done in this field.
My love of teaching, learning, and language has brought me to this moment and I can look back on all of it and thank my childhood friend, Lucía, for being the catalyst to me finding my place in the world.