When I started working in the field of education I did not know how much I was going to enjoy my job. What really inspired me to become a teacher was to see how new students (ESL immigrants) were handled in the school system. Due to the nature of my job, I had to pull new students out of the classrooms to give them language assessments. Some of them had only been in the US for a few days and it was really sad to witness how the majority of the teachers did not know what to do with them. Often those children were crying and scared because they felt rejected and helpless. Many times I found them sitting on a far corner of the classroom entertained with puzzles or copying words from a dictionary. Some were told that they had to change their name to an Americanized one because teachers claim their names had a difficult pronunciation. In addition, many students were getting the message that their culture was not good and they ended up feeling ashamed of being Hispanic and lost interest on keeping their home language.
At that moment I wanted to become a teacher to help all those minority students. I wanted to create a multicultural environment at school where students could feel safe and proud of their ethnicities and their home languages. I wanted to create an environment that embraced multiculturalism and multilingualism. Although it is unfortunately, that I ended up moving away from that small farming town that inspired me to become a bilingual teacher, I have now the opportunity to promote multiculturalism and teach a second language to my students. My hope and goal as a bilingual teacher in a language immersion program is to educate and create a new generation of students that value and respect all cultures and to be aware and respect bilingualism because they have experienced how difficult it is to learn and communicate in a different language.
At that moment I wanted to become a teacher to help all those minority students. I wanted to create a multicultural environment at school where students could feel safe and proud of their ethnicities and their home languages. I wanted to create an environment that embraced multiculturalism and multilingualism. Although it is unfortunately, that I ended up moving away from that small farming town that inspired me to become a bilingual teacher, I have now the opportunity to promote multiculturalism and teach a second language to my students. My hope and goal as a bilingual teacher in a language immersion program is to educate and create a new generation of students that value and respect all cultures and to be aware and respect bilingualism because they have experienced how difficult it is to learn and communicate in a different language.