My Middle School Experience
I never thought of the experience I would have to face after moving to New York City. I was excited and scared when I moved here with my father, mother and my little sister on July 2012. I was going though many different emotions. I knew my life would change completely by moving away from my friends and my extended family who I grew up with but I also knew I finally had received an opportunity of getting a better education and be the first member of my family to go to college. I knew it would be hard for me to get used to the environment that I would be moving into but I knew I could do it. My thoughts completely changed after I moved here. In my country, Bangladesh, I used to speak Bengali and I was taught very little English. However, it wasn’t all bad. In my English class, I used to speak English, which I thought was moderate because everyone in my class and the teacher was speaking very little English like I was and everyone had the same accent. I was taught British English, which is completely different from what I learned when I moved to America.
I was very excited to start school after moving to New York City. I moved to this country in July and had to wait two months for school to start, which was a long wait for me. I got admitted into IS 125 in September which I was very excited about. Finally, I was starting a new chapter of my life. I was interviewed before I was admitted. I told them about my country and my move here and going to a new school in America for the first time. They were very nice to me and that made me feel good about myself, even though I never spoke fluent English, I thought I was good at it and I was able to understand them well, until I went to my first class.
Mr. Wang was teaching science and I could barely understand what he was saying. I stayed quiet during the lesson because I was too scared to ask him to speak slowly. After the class ended I reached out to my classmates for help. “What are you saying?” “Can you speak clearly?”, they said. I did not know how to explain my situation to them so I decided to stay quiet. I remember when they were leaving, they looked back and laughed. I knew I was being judged for my accent and I went through this every single day. I had to hold in my tears and deal with it. I never thought school would make me feel so bad. I stopped talking to people from my school, even the teachers. If I could not understand anything, I would just stay quiet. I knew I was a good student but my grades said otherwise because I did not understand English. I knew I needed help but I did not know how to get any help without feeling judged. I was ashamed of myself for not being able to speak as good as the others. All I could do was blame myself for it.
Everything was going the same way at school until I started getting messages on Facebook from my classmates. They were not the messages I was ever hoping to get. Most of them were making fun of me and I guess judging me behind my back during school was not enough. “You should go back to your country!” “You don’t belong here!”, they said. They were cursing me and their words made me hate myself more. I did not know the meaning of cyber bully or that I could talk to someone about it. I felt so lost and alone. I knew talking to my parents about this would not help because they barely spoke any English and they were already going through so much. I decided to stay quiet about it once again.
I must say, my classmates who made fun of me, they actually influenced me to be better at English. I started to figure out ways I could get used to the American accent and be able to understand and speak. I started with basic English. I started going to the public library on my free time, read books that I could understand, look up words that I did not understand. I watched news and American shows but they did not help me learning because of the tough English. I started watching cartoon shows for children and that helped me very much. After a few weeks I felt more confident about talking to people and not caring about my bad accent. I figured if I stayed quiet, things would get worse. I started asking my teachers for help and they were very understanding and helpful. They helped me so much and I could never be more thankful. Mrs. Courtney, my English teacher, she helped me with my speaking and writing. After a while I was talking to my classmates and their bullying barely bothered me anymore. I knew they were still making fun of me but I did not let that affect me in any way. I ignored the bully and keep speaking. I knew I was getting better every day and After a while, I even started to understand news and was able to watch American shows. I started getting better grades then my classmates and I cannot explain how good that felt. Even though I was struggling with big vocabularies, I could see improvements by the end of the year.
Even though my middle school experience wasn’t as good as I expected it to be, when I look back and think about it, it makes me realize the people who bullied me, pushed me to do better with my English. I am still not perfect at English like my American mates but I am proud of my improvements. I probably can never be as perfect as them but I’m still learning, every day. One thing I learned very well that teenagers in this country are full of hate and majority of them will not like you if you cannot be like them.
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