Blog #8 - Tongue Tied; Aria, by Richard Rodriguez

 In this reading, we invision the early childhood life of bilingual man, Richard, or Ricardo, Rodriguez. He grew up only speaking spanish in his house with his mother father and siblings, and learning english in school. He began as being shy to speak when called upon, eventually causing some nuns from his school to visit his home and formally ask his parents to have Richard and his siblings speak more spanish at home for practice in school. Richard saw speaking spanish as a private language since he only ever heard it in his home, while learning english and speaking it was a public language. He felt increasingly angry that his family was losing that sense of togetherness when they spoke spanish since they began to speak in mostly english at home. 

I feel like this is a common truth amongst spanish speaking students in America because in some states like ours, Rhode Island, these students are often outnumbered in schools compared to their english speaking peers. This outnumberment can make students have a feeling of not belonging in their classroom, or have them feeling shy to speak out in class. If there are a group of spanish speaking students in a classroom though, they can probably feel more comfortable knowing that they are not the only ones who feel this way.