Rainbow

By Fiona Kuang / Spring 2026

The hot afternoon sun was beaming on my skin, school just ended. Children were playing at the playground waiting for their parents to pick them up. I sat there swinging my feet back and forth, captivated at the sight of them playing but instead of joining them I was going to my teacher's classroom. As I roll my heavy backpack to the classroom, I see my teacher sitting there looking over some papers, seeing me she gets up and tells me to come over to the whiteboard. Looking at the whiteboard I see that there were some words written there but I couldn’t seem to make them out. Guiding me to the board

“Can you tell me what it says on the board?”  My teacher asked.

I shake my head, my shoulders slump, I couldn't understand what was written at all.

When I was even younger I knew I was different from the other kids around me. I looked different and spoke a different language. It took a lot of effort for me to even understand Spanish, the country's national language. But now looking at the board in front of me, I knew I had no clue what was going on. English was so tough to understand for me, they looked similar to some Spanish words but they sounded so different.

“What about this one?” she says as she writes a different word on the board.

I shake my head again, dropping my head, it looks similar but I didn’t really know.

Maybe because I was learning so many languages that it would take a while to figure them out one by one. I thought to myself. Fidgeting my hands, dropping my head even further, I didn’t know where to look. I didn’t want to look at the board in front of me. It was just four simple letters.

“Then let's go do a word together” She said, erasing the words written on the board.

She starts writing a new word, the word “rainbow” appears soon. Below she separates the word into two, “rain” and “bow”.

“Okay now, do you see the words on the board?” I nod, answering her. “You see that combining these two words ‘rain’ and ‘bow’ together can create the word ‘rainbow’.”

Looking at the words before me, something in my brain slowly started turning.

“Have you seen a rainbow before? If you have, you know that a rainbow is created from rain that is hit by the sun which creates multi color rays. And it's shaped just like a bow.” She said as she drew a rainbow on the word.

The gears in my mind started to spin, faster and faster with every word she described. I never knew that this language could be interpreted this way.

“The word ‘bow’ is written quite similar to the word 'bowl’ , the word we learned recently in class. They sound the same in the beginning but the extra l in the end makes it sound completely making it a different word” She said, as she was writing the words on the board.

Staring at the board, everything just started to make sense to me.

“Do you understand?” She asked, looking at me.

“Yes, I think so.” I said, nodding my head as I stared at the board.

After going over some more words. I waved goodbye to her, as I rolled my backpack away, back straight, eyes forward looking ahead.