Marissa Marquez-Ocampo

Mrs. Maxwell

March 9, 2012

Kindergarten Teacher

In 1988 of the month of November day 20th, my mother and my brother came to

the United States of America illegally. Six days later my mother became a resident of this

country from the help of her "trokero". She worked hard to give everything to my

brother. Years later she left to go back to México left my brother in hands of a comadre.

She then had me and brought me illegally and thanks to God I am a citizen of this

country.

This probably doesn’t have anything related with my senior project but it means

a lot to me. It means a lot to me because I can say that I’m part of this country, too. I say

this because; I don’t want to be recognized as the girl who crossed the border illegally. I

want to be recognized by Ms. Marquez the future teacher.

My name is Marissa Marquez and for my Senior Project I am doing kindergarten

teaching which at the same point I will also help the ones that have difficult speaking

English, like I did when I was in kindergarten. I am also proud to say that in my family. I

am the first to graduate. And this is how it goes.

For the past 12 years that I’ve been in school till today I’ve only known English

speaking teachers, but of the start of today I want to make a change. I have seen a major

of Hispanic kids struggle in their education. Why? It is because they cannot communicate

well. That is why I want to help them. I want to be a start in their education.

I chose kindergarten teaching because it relates to me in so many ways. I love

kids. I have the patience to be around children. And I know how hard it is to be a

kindergarten teacher because it’s their first year of school and I was once one of those

kids. I also chose this because I want to prove myself that I can be someone in life. I am

bilingual student and that is my advantage to help the ones that have hard time speaking

English. Also to prove to all those non English speaking parents that it is important for

them to be involved in their children’s education.

Now, these days it is really hard to get parents involved in their children's

education especially if they don’t know how to speak English. i know this for a fact

because my mother has been living in this county for about twenty-three years and yet

she cannot say a complete sentence. I had always struggled in school since elementary to

middle school because my mother was never there because I would come to school with

papers from the teacher and she would just throw them always because she didn’t

understood. She would tell me "mija usted sabe que yo no entiendo ingles" honey, you

know I don’t understand English. When I needed a paper to get signed and brought back

to school I would always turn my papers in late. The teachers would finally ask do you

want it in Spanish. Yes I would reply.

For my senior project, I planned to create lesson plans. The way I started to make

the lessons plans was to get scheduled with Ms. Rogers my project facilitator. We started

with the basic things a kindergartener needs to learn. I created a whole unit which is for

about a three week unit. In my product it will demonstrate the procedures of what the

teacher does based on what they are teaching. Ms. Rogers also helped me with organizing

in perfect format.

Ms. Rogers also introduced me to Mrs. Gloria Hernandez-Hilliard she is a

bilingual community liaison. Mrs. Gloria was also a help because I asked her questions

about parents and how much involvement is in their children’s education. Luckily, she

also works for Mimosa Elementary school. Which 70% of their students are Hispanics.

I chose to do this because it would be a good way for me to know how

kindergarten teachers organize themselves to make ever material simple, fun, and educational for

their students.

My project facilitator is a kindergarten teacher in Mimosa Elementary School

located in Roswell. Her name is Mrs. Rogers. I was introduced to Mrs. Rogers by the

school’s principal Mrs. rogers has giving her time to help me finish my senior project.

She introduced me to her class and the expectations from her students. Also, I also

learned that it is not easy to be an Early Childhood Teacher because small children can be

inpatient or not cooperative. i also learned that is hard learning your ABC's, but not when

Mrs. roger uses creativity.

As I come to conclusion I am still in doubt if I want to actually do kindergarten

teaching in the next four year either ways one day I will be a mother and have kids of my

own. So, my conclusions are simple Mrs. Marquez can you translate this for me?