What is it like to be multilingual? Languages have always been a passion of mine since the time I was a child. I am a native speaker of Greek, and being a native speaker of Greek has helped me cognitively to pick up the Spanish language. I started taking Spanish in 7th grade, and continued to take Spanish courses all throughout my years of secondary education. When I first started taking Spanish in the 7th grade, I was able to pick up on it easily because being a native speaker of Greek helped me to in addition to remembering a few Spanish words from the TV shows that I used to watch when I was a child, such as Sesame Street. After I graduated high school, I started college at Middlesex Community College where I had the opportunity to take Spanish courses. However, at the community college there was no such thing as a Spanish major. I did continue to take Spanish courses at Middlesex, and I knew that I always wanted to pursue a career where I got the opportunity to use Spanish, but I was not sure exactly what I wanted to do back then. At one time, I was doing some research on careers where Spanish is often used, such as a translator, interpreter, or even a teacher. In the beginning, I thought that I wanted to be an interpreter, but then I realized that it was not a steady job as well as how I needed to practice my Spanish in addition, due to the fact working in that job occupation one needs to speak and understand Spanish at a fast pace with no repetition involved.

After I graduated Middlesex and transferred to UMass Amherst, I realized that I wanted to be a teacher; however, I was not sure what grade level I wanted to teach. I had the idea that I wanted to teach middle school or high school, because I had a Spanish teacher whom I still keep in touch with up to this day, and I had her for Spanish all throughout middle school and high school. In addition, my Spanish teacher inspired me to become a Spanish teacher, because of the way she taught Spanish, the way she made learning Spanish fun, and the way she was accomodating and flexible with all of her students. Up to this day, I continue to visit her classrooms just to observe when I go home during the long winter break that we usually get. She still continues to make Spanish learning fun as usual, and now at my high school there is another requirement that students who are Special Ed need to take at least 2 years of a foreign language. When observing her classroom, and the special needs students that are in there, they usually always have a para-professional in the class to help them out.

Next semester, I am taking EDUC 325, Intro to Special Ed, and I feel as though I am going to enjoy that class. Plus, I heard that it is an excellent class as well. I feel as though it will be great to take a class in Special Ed, because I used to be Special Ed when I was in school. I have a learning disability of PDD, which is a form of autism. However, it is the autism which is the super high functioning. So long as I have done some research on Special Ed, I learned that Special Ed is a spectrum of high functioning, medium, to severe regarding learning disabilities and how one may not process information the same way others do.

During my years here at UMass, I thoroughly enjoyed SPAN 575 and EDUC 497I, Tutoring in Schools. In EDUC 497I, I had the opportunity to use Spanish at the school where I would tutor elementary school children, because there were many children at the school who were ESL and whose first language was Spanish. When tutoring the children with assignments, the teacher would speak in front of the class saying what picture to circle that begins with that particular letter. For example, when she said the word “Dog”, and many other things that began with different letters, then she would ask what begins with the letter “D”, and then the children would have to circle that particular picture. For the ESL children who spoke Spanish, I would translate to them in Spanish, and then tell them about a certain object in Spanish that begins with the letter “D” such as “Dulce” and then pronounce the word “Dog” in English as well as make the letter sound of “D”. In SPAN 575, I have learned about teaching methods, and I got the opportunity to practice speaking Spanish with many native speakers, because the majority of students in that class were native speakers of Spanish. Also, in SPAN 575, I did some classroom observations on how teachers teach Spanish, classroom management and assessment, as well as how to manage conflict of interest and behavior. When having to write essays based upon classroom observation, I also included what I would do if I was the teacher teaching the class that I observed, and how to make learning Spanish fun in addition to the classes that I observed for SPAN 575 and the Spanish classes of my Spanish teacher from high school. Plus, I had the opportunity to be creative in SPAN 575 when getting assigned my first homework assignment. My first homework assignments were to create activities based on a certain chapter in the book. Basically these activities were the creation of worksheets that students who are enrolled in Spanish courses would usually complete. After taking these courses, I came to realize that I want to be a Spanish teacher at the elementary school level, because I feel as though I would have fun with children as well as continue to use Spanish.