This year is really where I can push my Spanish learning to the next level. Throughout my whole life, I have been studying mostly basic Spanish for 4 years, but this year, I get to expand my knowledge on languages and really help myself grow in my Spanish speaking abilities. Something that I want to get out of this class this year is to be able to understand what people are saying when they speak to me in Spanish. I can pick out small verbs and nouns and just general grammar, but when it’s all strung together it still sounds like gibberish to me. I want to be able to understand people speaking to me, and really comprehend what they are saying. I think this will be the most beneficial part of learning Spanish, and that this is a skill that really must be dialed in order to further my Spanish speaking abilities. And even though this is a required class at AHS, I would still take it even if it was a choice, because I really do believe that being bilingual can help your brain grow and can also introduce a lot of different opportunities later in life rather than monolingual people. Finally, I really want to teach myself how to enjoy learning a second language, so that I can use that skill to maybe learn a third language farther down the road in life.
The Park Elementary School project and experience began by learning a bit about our kid we would be shadowing, making talking point cards with drawings and questions on them in Español to pick up and have a good conversation with our kid. We also picked out the first round of books to read to our kid. When we arrived, we started out by playing a quick game and getting to know our kids, then (because I was with a 4th grader) we got to sit down, talk and read to our kid for a little while. We then went onto our kids first classes, which on the first day, was PE. After their "specials" class, we went onto their core classes in which they were learning about Colorado history and how they played a part in previous wars. This is how it was both days, a quick game, reading then onto their specials class and then into their core classes.
The overall experience in my opinion, was awesome! I loved the whole experience and I loved hanging out with my kid. When we first met, like any other elementary school kid was slightly awkward and shy, but as soon as LEGO's and Star Wars came up in conversation, he warmed right up. Returning to Brayan was a lot smoother, and we had a lot of fun without really having to deal with the first meeting awkwardness. And it was much easier because we didn't have to figure out how everything was going to work. The second time we finished up reading pretty early, (Where The Wild Things Are en Español) and we got to participate in recess. It was definitely a cool experience having recess again and just getting to experience elementary school in general all over again! Me and Brayan had a really cool connection, somewhat due to the fact that we have really similar personalities.
Regarding my thoughts on bilingual kids, since I never got to go to elementary school, I never really got to experience any sort of cultural diversity in elementary school. The things I noticed during this whole experience were that the bilingual kids stuck together for the most part, they didn't quite mix and mingle with the other kids as well. Which in my opinion is to be expected just because of the language barriers and such. But there were more things I noticed, such as the fact that these kids are incredibly intelligent, and the fact that they can speak two languages and mix and mingle them together, which when we were reading, that kind of showed through. Im actually quite jealous of that skill, and I loved experiencing that during this project.
For me, my kid definitely inspired me to take steps to be a bilingual speaker, just because of the skills and neat opportunities it creates. One of the highlights of the experience was the second day when we walked in and Brayan ran up to me and gave me a hug and a high five and it was really cool having that happen just after one day (7 days ago) of time spent with him. I honestly wouldn't do anything different if I were to do it again, except leave my wallet and things I carry in my pockets in my car, all the kids sure loved stealing and playing with my things...
My overall takeaway from this experience was really powerful actually, I loved the fact that we were able to strike up and meet these kids and have a blast reading and shadowing them around to their classes. It taught me a lot about being a bilingual speaker and what thats like being an elementary school kid. As well as getting the opportunity to experience elementary school was really fun. The overall experience was a ton of fun, and a really interesting experience that I would gladly do again.