When Ana Cornejo’s fifth-graders ask her how to spell a word, as they often do, she doesn’t give them the answer. She teaches them tricks that will help them figure it out.
There’s Googling what they think is the correct spelling and seeing what suggestions come up. Or taking a second look at the writing prompt they’re working with -- the word often appears there.
“I’m teaching them the skills that I’ve used,” said Cornejo, who teaches at Berkshire Elementary School in Bakersfield’s Panama-Buena Vista Union School District.
In fact, Cornejo can tap a lot of her own experiences while teaching her largely immigrant population of schoolchildren. Because she is one of them.
Cornejo came to the United States at age 9 from the small Mexican town of Aguililla with her sister, stepfather and eventually her mother.
They settled in Bakersfield, the hometown of her stepfather. It was a whole new world for her.
“What was really amazing was going to the supermarket; I had never seen anything like that,” Cornejo remembered. “And seeing the automatic doors, that was also a shock. “
Cornejo was old enough for 4th grade but was enrolled in 3rd at Plantation Elementary in south Bakersfield because she didn’t know any English. She learned the language by hanging out with her older stepbrothers and watching the few TV channels she got at home, meaning a lot of PBS kids programs and “The Simpsons.”
“I remember one time getting in trouble for saying ‘shut up,’ words that I didn’t know were inappropriate to say at school,” she joked.
Cornejo always loved school. At the end of every school year she’d bring home textbooks that weren’t needed anymore and used them to “teach” her little sister and cousins.
She always got perfect attendance certificates because she never wanted to miss school. She can’t think of a single teacher who wasn’t wonderful to her.