11 September 2019

On January 12, 2001, my parents had their first child. This child was a girl and that girl is me. This date is not only my birthday, but it is one of the proudest days of my parents lives. Not only are the days that their children were born important but also the days they migrated to the United States. Once in a while, my parents have stories of how and why they migrated to this country and even though sometimes the stories would seem over exaggerated, I now see why they did so. From a young age, I was always aware of the situations my parents were in and seeing them being able to provide for myself and my siblings motivated me to do more everyday. They made their stories over the top in order to add more emphasis and make me realize that what they went through is real. Life as a new immigrant is hard in ways that I cannot imagine myself. All of their memories did however consists of one similar thing; they wanted to try to further their own and their future children’s education and coming to the United States was their gateway. My parents pushed themselves everyday in order to become role models for their children. 

Having parents who did not attend school in the United States is difficult due to the fact that every country, state and city teaches their students differently. What my parents were taught, were nowhere near the curriculum, that I was learning through my grade school to high school career. In the article, “Engaging Mexican Parents In Their Children’s Education”, Patsy Roybal states, “In Mexican schools, students must master specific skills before being promoted to the next grade… Because of challenging working condi-tions, it is difficult for schools in small villages to attract teachers”. This relates to my experiences because most schools in Nigeria, do not have the resources to hire more than enough teachers for their schools. This results in different topics not being discussed and moving onto the next grade level without being able to successfully complete the work. This impacted my life because a lot of the questions I needed help on, I could not rely on someone at home for assistance. Without someone at home also feeding me knowledge it became difficult to try to do well in school.

Being apart of an African culture meant that education was highly stressed. I was surrounded by people who wanted to better themselves and that pushed me to want more. From an early age, I was determined to always better myself. Over time I picked up better note-taking skills and study habits to not only help myself but my younger brothers as well. In my time in middle school, my school has had mandatory science projects that each person must do every year. As I entered middle school, I lacked the knowledge on how to complete one and asked my mom for help. My mother and I sat down for 30 minutes reading all of the work given and searching up meanings to words such as, hypothesis, independent variable and data analysis so I can complete my project. Seeing someone who has never completed a science project in her life being able to show me how to complete mine left me in awe. 

My mother was one of my  influences in which helped me strive to read and write, often. I wanted to be able to come home everyday and do my homework on myown. I would read for longer periods of time after my main homework and picked up free writing. This helped me gain a sense of how to edit my own writing and I became aware of and started to use different styles of writing techniques and styles of writing. In the article, Reading And Writing Are Not Connected, by Ellen C. Carillo, the author states, “As they get a little older, students begin to develop an aware-ness of genres or types of text”(Page 39). I agree with what Carillo stated because when reading and writing are taught we enhance our knowledge. Without the use of reading, I would not be able to differentiate different types of texts and would essentially not do well in school. My father when I was younger used to state that “reading and writing are the gateway to success”. This goes hand in hand with the following statement said by Carillo, “Without explicit attention to reading and the relation-ship between reading and writing, students will not have strategies for making sense of new or difficult texts, arguments, images and ideas they overcome”(Page 42). Writing and reading is needed to become successful. It helps in the real world when we need to fill out job applications, read presentations outline and even to communicate with others. Carillo also presented the idea that reading helps for making sense of new things and I agree. If I were not able to read or write I would not be able to enjoy the opportunities that have come my way. Being able to read and write from an early age, made me proficient.

Now that I look at my experience with immigrant parents I can now reflect on my writing and reading abilities. I was never interested in reading and having a motivator in my life, I was able to discover my own type of book genres that I dislike and love. This has also greatly enhanced my writing. When I was in middle school I struggled greatly with applying my thoughts to my writing and being able to connect my writing with authors that we talked about in school. I now apply what I saw my mom do everyday in my life. I re read all my notes, articles and books and write down notes which include the type of genres, transitional words and key points in the text. Being able to read and write also opens up a lot of doors and everyday I thank my parents for giving the opportunity to do so. A child with immigrant parents, already has a lot of odds stacked against them and I wanted to break that barrier. Picking up books such as “Fat, Stupid Ugly”,  “P.S. I Love You”, ”Speak” and “A Child Called It” helps with understanding different genres, writing techniques and how to apply them to your own work. It also helped with my oral skills real and vocabulary. Being able to apply reading and writing into my everyday life has helped me grow tremendously. It is my 2nd nature.