As part of my participation in the St Louis Storytelling Festival, I visited several schools in the area.
On one visit to a Kindergarten and first grade class, I told the first grades a story about teaching the numbers from 1 to 10 to my kids when they were babies. Then I asked the kids if they knew the numbers (They did, and I asked them to tell me the numbers). After that, I revealed that I had taught my kids the numbers in Spanish and I asked them if anyone knew the numbers in Spanish. Several little hands went up in the air. I invited those that had raised their hands to come to the front of the room with me so we could teach the numbers in Spanish to the other students.
Then something even more amazing happened.
When we were finished, one kid raised her hands about knowing the numbers in Portuguese.
After that, some more kids told us about knowing the numbers in Chinese, and then another kid in Arabic!
We took turns teaching and learning the numbers and then the vowels in several languages.
My little immigrant heart was about to burst of happiness!
I never imagined I would grow up to be a storyteller, I never imagined that I would grow up to provide immigrant kids with the representation that I lacked when I was going to school. I came to this country with a stutter, not knowing the language and undocumented. I didn’t have a voice.
Now, I am helping give a voice to a new generation of immigrants and helping them feel proud of their heritage.
I have a storytelling show about immigration stories
#80MAW and that class felt like a kid’s version of an immigration storytelling show. The kids were so proud of themselves and their heritage and I had to do my best no to start crying of happiness.
It was magical.
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including a visit to a juvenile detention center the following day (such a sad experience, it is already bad to have a large number of incarcerated adults, seeing kids in detention is just heartbreaking) and the final show the third day.
Sinceramente
Nestor “the Boss” Gomez
I posted a link to this magical experience on Twitter in case anyone would like to share it there
as you can see twitter keeps falsely claiming I posted “potentially sensitive content”
(although this time they ight be right. This post might give you feelings)
Read the second part to this story here