My Kindergarten Years

I started special ed kindergarten when I was 5 years old in Pendleton Elementary School in Buena Park. I had a teacher name Mrs. West and she was very patient with me. I was struggling in school and had a hard time learning most things. I clearly remember some of the fun activities and field trips we had. We had snacks each day according to the letter of the alphabet, and had fun with storytelling. We had fun doing arts and crafts and different activities throughout the school year. I remember we also did a play of the story the Golding locks and the three bears, we all took turns in the class being one of the bears or golding locks. Another day was about the gingerbread man, my teacher baked a gingerbread man and it somehow got lost and we went around trying to find it in the classroom, but we didn’t find it. At lunch time, when we got our food, we saw the gingerbread man lying on a plate with the leg bit off and they said a wolf did it like in the story. I learned counting numbers easily but most things I had a hard time learning in. I had to go to summer school and ended up flunking kindergarten because I could not pass the school year or summer school. Summer school was fun though, and I do remember I won a red balloon for easily counting to 100. I was so excited to have the balloon until we waited for the school bus, and the balloon was coming undone on my wrist because it was tied there. It flew away and I was crying. I looked up in the sky and I saw airplanes writing above me saying something about the year 2000. Later on like a couple weeks later, my teacher had written a book about that same red balloon I lost. She was also a children’s book author and illustrator. The story was about the red balloon flying across the world and different animals encountered it and tried to return it back to me. The whole journey became unsuccessful because the balloon popped towards the end of the story. That was a cute story. Kindergarten was pretty good, even though I was struggling to learn English mostly.

At home I was obsessed with watching Sesame Street, Barney, and other children’s shows. Sesame Street was something I had to watch before I go to school, and I literally had to see count Dracula talking about the number of the day before I go on the bus to school. If I missed the number of the day, I would get upset. I loved numbers so I had to find out the number of the day each day. I was mostly into TV at home besides my toys.

Then I went to Whitaker Elementary School in Buena Park, CA from my second year of kindergarten to third grade. I was put in general ed classes with special ed on the side. That’s when I started to experience bullying by my classmates. My second year of kindergarten was ok, I remember that year I went to a fun before and after school program at school and I had a really fun time there. They had board games, coloring paper, activities, movies, etc. They had group activities in the afternoon and I had so much fun that year. My mom worked more hours that year so I had to be there from 6am to 6pm. I remember on my first day of school I was confused because I saw a sign that said “welcome to kindergarten” and I knew I was already in kindergarten the year prior, I thought I was in the wrong class. So I found out then that I had to take kindergarten again since I flunked the previous year and I was in the right class. In my kindergarten class for that year, it wasn’t that bad. I sort of got along with the kids a little bit, and it was a basically normal year for me, no complaints.

That year was good at home since that was the year my parents took me and my brother out to places a lot as I mentioned earlier. I also started to play with my brother more because since he was 2 years old, my parents let him be outside the crib more often. I was 6 and he was 2 and we ran around a lot and played with toys together and everything. I do remember one important thing right after I started kindergarten the second time and turned 6 years old. One morning, on September 11th, 2001, I couldn’t go to school because of the schools closing down that day due to the attack that happened on the trade centers in New York. I was at home with my dad that morning and we were watching the news. I saw the video of the towers being shot down by the planes, and I was confused because the video didn’t look real and it was on the news. I asked my dad “is this even real?” and he said “yes, it’s on the news” and then I didn’t know what to think because the whole thing looked fake to me, like CGI animations from a movie. I literally thought it was a movie on the news or something.