With great opportunities, Joey Fredrickson finds great success.

Joey would’ve never thought that his family moving would help him with all the success he’s had throughout his life. His family moved into an area that had two different schools one being a private elementary school and the other being a Spanish immersion school. The other kid in his neighborhood that was his age were surprisingly all put into the Spanish immersion school.

What Joey didn’t realize is that the Spanish immersion school was the best thing that could’ve happened to him for his literacy. It’s good for him because that wasn’t just the best thing it was also his sponsor. His sponsor was the school because it opened many doors for him in our world being that he’s now bilingual and in today’s life that comes very handy where ever you decide you want your career path to be. The literacy this sponsor taught him was that one he’s now bilingual but it also helped open his eyes in a few different ways being that the difference in privilege that he had compared to others was very important.

This sponsor taught him a lot throughout his years, growing up his family housed teacher interns from Spain and Columbia. While this was great it helped him learn more of the culture and people of these countries and got to understand more of what they were like. This lead him to also going to Costa Rica and staying in a turtle sanctuary hundreds of miles away from civilization and I can only imagine what that did for connecting with more people and getting a first hand experience of what different cultures are like. Also during his freshman year he helped work at a migrant camp and helped with chores such as farming and even food distribution. While working this migrant camp he got to witness young kids learning english to go along with their primary language Spanish, this was different to Joey because the difference between him and them was that for him he had this bilingualism because it could help him with finding a good future employer, for them it was trying to catch up with the rest of the country and to protect their livelihood.

“Another big part of learning literacy was my fathers impact. Every night my dad would read Harry Potter books to my brother and I. If there was ever any maps or road signs he would also explain them to us and help us understand them from a young age.” Joey explained that this impacted him with the start of understanding English and the use of literature. During the interview anyone would be able to tell how thankful joey was that he was able to experience his childhood the was he did.

“I wouldn't have the friendships I have today”

Able to have the opportunity to be bilingual, he praised his parents for this. He talked about some background information about the reason why his family made the move. They wanted to move in the Bellevue area for better school instead of sending him to private school which is obviously a cheaper option. “That was the best decision my family made, I would have never got the same experience in an expensive private school. How the immersion elementary school acceptance worked was like a lottery ticket, based off of luck.” Joey described.

“Without hosting an intern from Columbia, I would have never understood any other country’s literature and language.”

The immersion school wasn't all glory in his parents eyes though. Worries his parents had were that joey wouldn't learn english as well as kids that were at a normal school. Obviously that wasn't the case! “I feel that it should be a requirement to have a language class in more elementary and middle instead of high school. As the brain develops its easier for kids to learn at a younger age than lets say during high school.” I found Joeys statement really interesting because there has been a lot of studies that state children can learn languages better. Joey did say that sometimes he’d intertwine Spanish and english during some sentences but that that was just the learning process.

The last thing that he mentioned and went in depth about in his paper was how people that were as privileged just like him didn't see how lucky they were. From his side of veiw taking it back to the literacy side, Joey explained that people he noticed that had a very high eduacation tended to not see how privlaged they were in their life or in certain things. “While coming from a very educated and wealthier area people tend to take advantage of things and not really understand how lucky they are”, Joey shared as an example from what he has witnessed. He took as an example his uncle who is a very smart man and very good with money, but has a very small “world view on peoples privilege, bland view for other people.” He said that he has seen this with a lot of people that have jobs in the literacy world and just regular jobs but they “get so caught up in their job they cant see other views”.

This all tailed into the end of the interview as Joey explained that in his writing he try's to have open views of both sides. Also how he was “lucky enough to have this bilingual opportunity and be able to explore these different worldS, I will never take for granted!”