As Sarah walked out of Mrs. Molyneux's class and towards Mr. Katz' class, she felt a hand on her shoulder. She turned around to see a slightly softer, but still just as muscled, Biff than she was used to.
"Hey, isn't your ESOL class the other way?" Biff asked.
Ah. No more Honors English, Sarah supposed. She blushed a little and just said, "you're right. I'm, ah, confused." Then she sheepishly kissed Biff on the cheek and walked down the other side of the hall and opened the door to a room that was probably built to be a large office, rather than a classroom.
In the next few minutes, the rest of the class filtered in. Four other students, all Spanish speakers: three Mexican boys and a Chilean girl. This region didn't get too many immigrants.
The class was run rather informally. The room just had one circular table in it, at which all five students, plus Mr. Mathis, sat. Sarah started remembering that Mr. Mathis usually had the students do paper handouts for the first half hour of class, and spent the second half hour on open (English) discussion, with participation being a factor in the daily grade.
Sarah put her head down and focused on her work, checking each question twice, going over her spelling three times, and asking for more work when she'd finished. Isabella, the Chilean girl poked her elbow and asked, in her own accented English, "why you working so hard?"
"I really, really want to learn English," was the answer.
Mr. Mathis clapped his hands and said, "that's the kind of thing I like to hear!"
The boys just made faces. Sarah seemed to remember herself and Isabella getting along really well, but neither of them bonding much with the guys in class.
This became clearer to Sarah when the oral section of class started.
"Today's topic," Mr. Mathis said, "is heritage. Heritage means what is passed down to you from your parents. I want you kids to talk about any old family stories your parents or grandparents may have told you. I want to hear where you come from."
"I come from Mexico," Victor said, smugly.
"Me too," came Carlos.
"My family just eats beans," Raul said, sticking his tongue out and making armpit farts.
"Mine too!" said Carlos, laughing.
Victor reached over Carlos to smack Raul in the shoulder, "hey, don't you make fun of beans, man, my father used to grow beans on the farm."
"Mine too, man!" Carlos was giggling uncontrollably at this point.
"Oh yeah?" came Raul, "Well my family came here illegally on truck filled with fifty other families!"
"Mine--"
"Hold on guys," Mr. Mathis interrupted Carlos, "This is supposed to be serious."
"Ay, Mister Mathis," Raul said, "I am being serious."
"No you're not. Isabella?"
The girl clasped her hands together and steadied herself on her chair as she spoke slowly. "Well, my gran-granfather come from Spain with my gran-granmother to Argentina. They live in Buenos Aires. My granfather become a Peronist, and left to Chile in one thousand nine hundred and fifty-five--"
Mr. Mathis interrupted her, "In English, we just say 'nineteen fifty-five.'"
Isabella nodded. "He left to Chile in nineteen fifty-five because of the junta."
"Weren't there problems in Chile, too?" Mr. Mathis asked.
"No in," she paused, trying to remember how to say it properly, "No in nineteen fifty-five. He have to hide from Pinochet later, though. My father just work in a factory, so he do okay."
"That's very interesting, Isabella. Sarah, how about you?"
Sarah wasn't entirely sure she knew enough about her own heritage to pull out any kind of story, although she was pretty sure her English was better than Isabella's. "My, uh," Sarah stumbled more over what she was going to say than the actual English, "My grandfather worked on a shipping boat between the Caribbean colonies and England. He says his company ran out of money while the boat was docked in Aruba, so the workers was stuck there. Most of his friends stayed in Aruba, but he worked until he had enough money buy a boat ticket. The first boat to Europe went to Antwerp, so that's the one he got on, and he met my grandmother there."
The bell rang, and Mr. Mathis stood up, saying "Good job Sarah, Isabella. You get 100 for participation. Boys, you each get 30. I'll see you tomorrow."
"Ay, Mister Mathis," Raul whined, "We participate!"
"If you keep participating like that, it'll go down to 20. Now go off to your next class before you're late."
