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Africa
When I was in first grade, I flew to Sudan with my family. We went there to see our family. My family in Sudan all spoke only Arabic and broken English. They were amazed when they saw how fluent I was in English at such a young age. They would constantly ask me to speak English for them because of how amazing they thought it was. This kind of encouraged me to read more and try harder in English. -
The Rug
When I was in second grade, my teacher would make us write journals every morning before class started. After we finished with our journals we would have to sit on the rug until everyone else was done and ready. I would always be the first one done with my journals and the first one sitting down on the rug. The teacher gave me special stickers for my hard work. -
Reading Tests
In third grade, in the middle of class, some lady would come and pull me and a few other good kids in my class out. She would take us to a room and give us reading tests to show how much higher we read than our average third graders. I did exceptional on these tests, and this resulted in me being placed in a higher level class. -
Spelling Bee
In fifth grade, my school had a spelling bee, and I was in it because I beat my class. After beating my class, me and plenty of other students were up against each other on the stage. I ended up winning this spelling bee. My English teacher was very proud of me, and I was proud of myself. After this I played against the older winners in City Hall and I won there as well. -
Don't Stress
After winning the second spelling bee at City Hall, a few weeks later, there was an even bigger one at Hartford. Children from all over the state were at this spelling bee. I began to stress out and lost pretty early. This showed me how many children that were younger than me there. This motivated me to go harder, because I can not let younger kids do better than me. -
New Language
In 7th grade, I took my first world language class. I took Spanish. The class was not as easy as I had expected it to be. I thought it would be a lot easier than it was. This taught me how privileged I am to know English fluently. Learning a new language is not easy, and this influenced me to work harder in my reading and language classes. -
First Essay
In 8th grade, I was assigned my first ever essay. This was a very big moment for me. It was like advancing to the next level academically. I did not do too well on this essay. It was my first time writing a piece this big. Doing bad on this essay encouraged me to work harder and improve at writing essays.