Ms. Lazzereschi’s Linguistic Bio
I was born on October 21st in Caracas, Venezuela from a Spanish mother and an Italian father. I was a happy baby, unless I was hungry. If that occurred, I used the only language I knew back then to ask for food: Crying. I started speaking Spanish at an early age, always motivated by my mother to speak clearly and using the right words. When I started writing, my mother used to stress the importance of correct spelling. For her, spelling mistakes were a bad look. In fact, she went as far as saying spelling mistakes were offensive to the reader! I am an only child and growing up it was expected of me to get good grades, especially in my language courses, and try my very best in the classroom.
In addition to Spanish, I grew up listening to Italian at home. My father was Italian, and my mom knew Italian because most of her friends in Caracas were Italian. Particularly, I am very grateful for my Godmother, who spoke to me in Italian, even if I didn’t understand everything she was saying. She pushed me to speak Italian, but I was afraid of making mistakes, so I always refused to continue the conversation in Italian. Today, I realize that she is the reason I am able to understand some Italian and am motivated to continue learning this language.
I always dreamed of speaking English fluently. Unfortunately, I never had the chance to meet English-speakers in Venezuela, so I learned English through explicit instruction at school. In the classroom, the practice of conversing in English with peers did not exist. That is, I had minimal, if any, practice speaking the language.
English never stopped chasing me, when I entered college in 1983, I decided to major in Computer Science. Shortly after, I found out that all the textbooks for my major were written in English. This was a blessing in disguise, as it forced me to acquire English at a much faster rate than I had previously. My English continued to develop when I started my job. When I moved to Miami in 2003, I quickly realized I had to improve my conversational skills and learn the colloquial English I was missing. To tackle this, I started taking English classes twice a week.
Becoming a teacher was not easy. Not only because of the language barrier and everything I had to learn for the job, but also because, believe it or not, I was bullied by a teacher who used to think that I was not ready to teach because of my accent. She did not value nor appreciate all the knowledge I had to share because of my accent and a few mistakes that I made in English. By the way, I still make mistakes! This is something our Emergent Bilingual (EB) students go through all the time, and I know how it feels. Therefore, I insist on recognizing the value of our student’s knowledge and everything they bring in their “bags”.
Here I am now, introducing myself as part of my first blog “Growing English”. Spanish is my native language, my identity. Spanish is the language that I inherited from my ancestors, the language that takes me back to my beloved country, to my family, to my education and to my childhood memories. English is my second language, the one that opened the doors of a classroom for me, the one that I am still acquiring, the language of the songs that I now understand, the language of my thoughts, and ultimately, the language I am teaching.
Growing Bilinguals 