S.L. / 5th Grade

How long did you do ESL?

• I did ESL for one year, back when I lived in New Jersey. I was in 5th grade.

What kind of exercises or activities do you do during ESL time?

• During ESL, I remember teachers pointing to a list of words that they put up on the wall and making us read the words out loud. Every ESL session, there was a different list of words we would learn. Teachers would try to put all the words in a song so that students would have an easier time memorizing them.

Does ESL pull you out of class or recess? How often do you do ESL? How do you feel about this?

• ESL didn’t pull me out of recess and lunch time, but it did pull me out of class. When others would have Language Arts class, kids like me who weren’t fluent in English were pulled out all together and were put in a separate classroom. We had ESL classes three times a week, because there was Language Arts class three times a week. Though these sessions helped develop my fluency in English, I was kind of bummed that I had to be pulled out of class.

Did the ESL program help you in other subjects?

• “ESL didn’t really help me in other subjects. I mean, isn’t it only supposed to help me regarding the English language?”

What are some social difficulties that come with being an ESL student? (e.g. stigmas or experiences that have come with being an ESL student)

• I think one difficulty I had as an ESL student was that it was a little harder to fit in with the other kids. As a foreigner, it was already hard for me to become assimilated into a new school, and being pulled out of classes for ESL naturally forced me to only hang out with the Asian kids who couldn’t speak English. I wanted to hang out with people who were different from me as well, but ESL did not really help in that. This is why I’m thankful for ESL yet have mixed feelings about it.

How do you believe the ESL program addresses or accommodates cultural differences that you may face after coming to a new country? Is there cultural education along with learning English?

• My ESL classes didn’t really teach me about culture, but I do not care too much about this. I acknowledge and understand that it’s really hard for teachers to teach culture to kids who don’t even know the alphabets perfectly, per se. This was the case for me too—I didn’t think about teachers having to teach culture to ESL students like me, not just because I was so little back then but also because I simply would not have understood.