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Heidi

BACKGROUND
Sex: female
Ethnicity:Dutch
Born in: Hanford, California
Parents born in: US





Any Personal Characteristics or experiences that would cause you to possibly see things differently than the majority of people in the US?

As a freshman in college, I lived abroad, in Argentina. I had had two years of high school Spanish, but I really had never studied a foreign language. When I first arrived there, I was lost in a giant language barrier. I also experienced a culture shock. Their culture was so different and I had no idea what was expected of me. I could not understand anyone, even if they spoke slowly. I felt alone and frustrated. Soon I started picking up the Castillian Spanish that they spoke and quickly began to pick up on their culture and what was expected of me. I learned the language quickly, but I had no one to communicate with for almost two months. I had no choice but to learn the language, if I had wanted to talk to anyone. After three months, I began to expand my vocabulary and speak in a more fluent manner. After 5 months, I could talk with anyone and everyone and could understand most everything that was spoken. I know how it feels to be an outsider in a different culture. I thing that this experience makes me more empathetic when seeing other people trying to acculturate into our society.


Thinking back on your childhood and adolescence, can you remember a teacher teaching something that was particularly interesting and memorable to you? What was being taught? How was the teacher teaching it? Why do you think it was such an effective learning experience for you?

As a fourth grader, I can remember learning how to write in cursive. My teacher was very helpful and understanding about learning how to write in cursive. She had us stand up and move our arms in a curricular/oval motion, then we moved our heads and then our entire bodies. At first, I had no idea why she had us do this. She used to say, "If we get our bodies ready for cursive writing, our minds will be ready for it too." She then would have us sit down and take the oval/curricular motions that we were doing with our entire arms and just move our writes. Then we would concentrate on moving our fingers in a circular/oval motion, and then with a pencil in hand we would start writing out oval shapes on our handwriting paper. She had all of us wanting to learn cursive because we knew that it was going to be fun. We lover when she said it was time for writing. We were not just sitting down and writing in a boring way, but she made an otherwise boring and monotonous activity very fun and exciting. For that reason, I really enjoy her lessons and will always remember the way she motivated us to want to learn cursive writing.

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