“All of my students' grades went up. They even did the homework! My students actually looked forward to class each day.”

— April Holland, Teacher, Martin Luther King, Jr. Middle School

STUDENT ANTHOLOGIES EXCERPTS

Emmanuel Viray's "Language"

in It's Up to Me: Stories of Choices, Predicaments and Decisions by San Francisco Youth

When I was six, I lived in Mandaluyong City, Manila. One day my dad called me from America to tell me something very important.

"Hello," my dad said.

"Hey, Dad, how's it going?" I asked him.

"Fine, everything is fine," he blurted.

"So, why did you call?" I questioned.

"I have to tell you something. You are coming to America," he told me.

"Really? I'm finally going to see my parents!" I said excitedly.

Until then, I had only seen my dad in pictures.

My dad has white hair and he is not very tall. He has dark brown eyes. He is chubby, not slim, and he looks a little bit dirty because he is a mechanic. He is the oldest of the ten children in his family. From our phone conversations, I knew that he liked to watch Filipino news and, every Saturday, he liked to go jogging. Sometimes, he would call me on his days off. He has a really deep voice—sometimes he sounds like a man whose voice is changing.

The day I got to America, my dad was so excited to see me he got to the airport an hour before my flight landed. I couldn't blame him for being excited; he hadn't seen me for almost six years. I had lived in the Philippines since I was about a year old.

A few months after I came to America, I enrolled at Longfellow Elementary. Every day, at lunchtime in the yard at Longfellow, I get to see my friends. Every day, I hear the clock ticking, the ticking signaling that lunch is almost over. Then I notice it is 1:30 in the afternoon. The sun shines in my eyes. The rail on the playground gets really hot, and when I touch it, it almost feels like I've been stung by a bee. Sometimes, while I stand outside, I can smell the lunch loaf from the previous day's lunch.

I can still remember my first few days on the playground. I remember being worried that if I spoke to people in English, I would get laughed at, but if I spoke to people in Tagolog, my classmates would not be able to understand me. When I got settled in my class, everybody asked me the same things over and over again. When I didn't understand what people were asking me, I would just smile and nod my head.

Most people were nice, but some kids beat me up just because they knew that I would not be able to explain to the teacher what had happened. So, to protect myself, I went to the library and checked out books to help me learn to speak English. I read and read every day until I could speak perfectly. I showed everyone that I could learn to speak English. I even made a few friends along the way.

Even after I had learned English, though, I chose to speak both languages. In public, with other people, I speak English. When I'm with my family, I speak Tagalog so that I won't forget it. I know I made the right choice because, in the end, I learned a new language and kept my old friends. Mostly what I learned is that you should never give up.

Emmanuel likes to play basketball. His favorite NBA team is the Los Angeles Lakers. In his free time, he listens to rap music. He also loves to play video games on PlayStation 2. He likes pepperoni pizza so much that he could eat it every single day.

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