At Harriet Bishop Elementary school, I worked with the teachers to select seven ESL children representing Romania, Laos, Cambodia, Korea, Mexico and Somalia. With the help of their ESL teacher, the children wrote stories, drew pictures, and told me what they could about their experiences immigrating to the U.S. Despite their diverse backgrounds, a similar thread was being woven as I began to learn from them what it was like to start their lives over in a foreign nation and to learn in a foreign tongue. They all had so many similar obstacles to overcome even though they came from many different parts of the world, but one child stood out. This particular student had immigrated from Somalia and although she wore western clothing, she kept to her religious values which required her to keep her hair covered. She had also left a war-torn nation with her family, and lived in a refugee camp located in Kenya for three years before relatives living in the U.S. were allowed to sponsor her family’s immigration to the United States. Through her experience, I realized the importance of sharing what I learned from seven special children through a story that will hopefully make us all realize what it would be like to be an ESL student in America.

In doing so, I have blended my own childhood memories of feeding the Canadian geese at Silver Lake in Rochester, Minnesota with those of these children to create A Gift for Sadia.

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