ESL. I'm a product of those special classes.

Yes, I'm one of those kids who got carted off to another class in the middle of my regular school day to sit in smaller groups to learn...English. I still remember it clearly.

During the middle of some class, a special teacher would poke her head in the door and summon me with that ESL hand of hers. It beckoned, "come ye who speaketh poor English with mongol accent." I don't really recall who was in my class but I just remembered they all had black hair & slanty eyes like me. I think to the teachers, we were all the same kind of people.

I probably started ESL in 2nd grade. By that time, I actually thought my English was pretty good since I had already been in the US for about 3 years. Plus, you know how quickly kids pick up languages. Being an avid English text reader since I was 5 - this absolutely blew my mind. Why me? But yet, the teachers must have thought that I still needed some improvement somewhere. I knew for a fact that I was better than a lot of my other ESL classmates, so why the hell was I still in here? I didn't think I spoke it any worse than my native peers. I just couldn't make sense of it.

Back in the regular classrooms, all my friends were of all nationalities...white, yellow, black, red, brown, whatever. And color lines weren't that obvious unless it was a down and dirty fight and names were being called. But aside from that, there would always be a segregation amongst us when some of us had to trod off to that special ESL class.

I continued in these small groups of ESL reading classes until my 4th or 5th grade. Coincidentally enough, I was also in the excelled/advanced English class during my "other life" as a regular student.

Tell me, am I missing something here? And still to this day, I can't understand why I had to go through ESL classes during my primary years. Was it because I was labeled an immigrant through the eyes of my teachers and shipped off to quarantine with the other immigrant kids in ESL class? Or perhaps they were worried that after meeting with my parents at teacher's conferences my English would sound like my parents, accented.

Who knows.

...

On the flip side of ESL classes are Saturday school language classes. I wonder how many of you went through that like me? Early on, my parents enrolled me in Saturday classes fearing that I will lose my native tongue as a child. There hasn't been one person I spoke with that didn't hate Chinese/Japanese school as much as I did as a kid. Don't parents know that we hate being forced to go to language schools? And especially on a Saturday morning at that! I remember going to the 9am classes with a bunch of ABC's. My mom was a teacher for the Cantonese 1 class and I got shoved into Cantonese 2 but since I already knew the language - it wasn't much of a stimulant for me. So they eventually put me in Mandarin 1.

My first experience with Mandarin was at age 9. Bo po mo fo. Duh tuh nuh luh. Had to learn all those lame phonetic sayings. I can't even remember them to this day except for those written above.

I especially hated the "kung fu" time. All the kids had to go out and do a series of kung fu moves taught to us by a kung fu instructor. Some were really good at it but I never caught on because I had "that attitude" of not wanting to learn and not wanting to fit in. Yeah, I thought I was too cool.

I always think that if a kid wants to learn the language, they will do so when they get older and feel the desire to. But more often than not, it's too late by then and how many times have you heard that, "I wish my parents put me in Chinese school when I was younger." Yeah you say that now but trust me, if you were a kid, you would rather be watching Scooby Doo and eating Cocoa Puffs instead of going..."bo po mo fo".

Did I just write "mofo"?

...

Am thinking of catching the latest play at the David Henry Hwang theatre called, "The Year of the Dragon" by Frank Chin. Here's what the EWP had to say about it: [ We’come a Chinatowng, Folks!” And welcome back to Fred Eng’s Chinatown tours! In this, the Year of the Dragon, EWP Founding Artistic Director Mako directs this seminal play by the playwright many consider to be the godfather of Asian American theatre. This play caused an enormous uproar when it was first produced in 1974. It not only influenced a generation of APA writers, but it also had a profound impact on an entire generation of Asian Americans. ]

Preview is on January 25th. Show will officially open on January 31 - February 25, 2001.

Afterall, I do have 2 free passes to use up.

I was also interested in seeing "The Flower Drum Song" at the Ahmanson Theatre coming up April 15th - June 10th, 2001 but unfortunately that show has been cancelled due to lack of funding or something. Hiss. Boo.

You can read about the reason why and all that pertinent info here. Hopefully they will show this again at another time, another place.

It does seem like a long time since I've talked about Asian American stuff, aside from my own personal rants about my Asian self growing up in America stories (yawn). But hopefully I'll be able to find more sites for you guys (like in the past) - as long as I don't go crazy surfing on this 56K modem first.

I'm out.

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