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- Jun 2021
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www.migrationencounters.org www.migrationencounters.org
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Anita: When did you start going to school, in Chicago or in LA?Luisa: I moved to Chicago and that's where I started going to school. I started going to school at the age of six. Unfortunately, the school that I went to did not have a bilingual program. I was stuck with Miss S. [Chuckles]. I'm never going to forget her … Miss S., lovely woman [Chuckles].Anita: Is that sarcastic?Luisa: Yes, [Chuckles] very sarcastic. Did not speak a lick of Spanish. Not one sentence. I don't think she knew how to pronounce anything, and she was as WASP [White Anglo-Saxon Protestant] as you can get. This woman would get extremely frustrated with me—extremely—and I didn't know what was going on. To me, it was a completely … [Disgusted sound] it was mind-boggling how I could go from—I knew how to read and write in Spanish. I was a pretty smart kid. I knew how to read and write in Spanish at six years old. So I go into first grade and I can't even understand what my teachers are saying, so it was extremely frustrating and this teacher found it extremely frustrating as well, so she would lay me down face down half the day on the magic carpet where she would read stories to everyone because she didn't want to deal with it anymore. I told my mom—Anita: Because she didn't want to deal with what?Luisa: Deal with me anymore. I guess she didn't know where to put me. She didn't know what to do with me, she didn't know how to teach me, so her solution was to put me aside and not have to deal with me, so I had to pretty much be invisible for half the class. Just put my head down and not say a word. So I picked up English extremely fast because I had to [Chuckles]. I had to pick up English very, very, very fast or that was going to keep happening. I didn't want that to keep happening, so I picked it up.
Time in the US, School, Elementary, Learning English, Teachers, Discrimination/stigmatization, Working hard; Time in the US, Feelings, Frustration, Determination
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