I remember being enrolled in English Language Learners in elementary school. That may have been a little embarrassing at the time, because I did not feel I needed to be in ELL. If anything, I believe being bilingual has elevated my English skills as well, and code switching is an awesome thing to be able to do in order to get your point across to other bilingual students. Makes my language skills so much broader in general, so it helped me gain many friends with similar backgrounds in the past despite the embarrassment I felt being put into an extra-help program. Speaking Russian was enforced in my household. If I spoke English, I was ridiculed and ignored. Although I’m grateful for the opportunity to have retained my heritage language now, at the time it had caused a lot of turbulence in the home, as I would sometimes refuse to speak Russian and would therefore be punished.
