Celebrate Your Roots with Teacher Robin!

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Hello, welcome to another class. I’m Robin and today we are going to talk about our roots. Now what do I mean by roots? Your roots are who you are, your family, where they come from your history, all of this as part of your roots, your origin. So today we are going to talk about this. Why have I chosen this topic? Because December 23 is Roots Day. So this is a special day to encourage people to honor, to research where they came from. So, many people know about this and some people actually don’t know a lot about their family from many generations back. So let’s talk about some vocabulary related to this and then I’m going to tell you how you can learn more if you want to. Alright, so as I said in December, the holidays, this is a time when we spend with our family. So it’s a great time to talk about our roots, our family history, and celebrate our heritage. Okay, this word “heritage”, this means the traditions, language, culture of a society. Okay, so all of this, your heritage, is part of who you are for everyone. This day, this Roots Day is celebrated in the United States, mainly because the United States is what many call a “cultural melting pot”. What does that mean? A melting pot means a mix. So where many cultures, many different people come together. So that’s what’s wonderful about the United States. There are so many different people, so many mixes of cultures, and so many heritages. So I’m going to tell you more about that.

Now let’s look at some more vocabulary. So the people who came before us, all right, this could be our grandparents or even before, they are called our “ancestors” or our “forefathers”. Okay, so these are two different words to describe the people related to you from many, many, many years ago, your ancestors or your forefathers. Okay, so let’s look at how we, how we talk about these people, how we call them because you probably know general family vocabulary. You have your mom, your dad, and then you have their parents, which are your grandmother and your grandfather. But what happens after that, what do we call these people? Okay, so, for example, your grandmother’s mother, you would call your great-grandmother, and your grandmother’s father, you would call your great-grandfather. So with every generation, we add the word “great”. So this can go on for many, many, many years. Okay, so you can say, my great-grandmother, my great great-grandfather, and you can also apply this to your aunts and your uncles as well. So these are your parents’ brothers and sisters. So you can say my great-aunt, my great great-uncle, etc. Okay, so this is how we call our ancestors.

So how can we learn more about our families? There is a study that is called “genealogy”. Okay, so this is the study of the past and present members of our family. So where they come from, how they moved around the world, who are the members of your family? This is all part of the study of genealogy. Okay. And when you study genealogy, you form, you establish, what’s called a “family tree”. So this family tree, it’s like a map of our family from the very beginning all the way to us. So with the family tree, you have basically two sides. One side is your “maternal” side, which means your mother’s side, and the other is your “paternal” side, your father’s side, okay? So, when we talk about our family members, excuse me, when we talk about our family members, we refer to them as maternal or paternal, so you can say my maternal grandmother, which means your mother’s mother or my paternal grandfather, for example. And that way, you know which side you’re talking about. Okay, so we have this family tree with all of our grandparents, great-grandparents, etc.

So how can we find out more about this if we don’t have this information? Nowadays, there are many, many websites where you can discover your genealogy. You can even take a test, where they will give you more information about where you come from. And you can even maybe connect, virtually, with some family members that you haven’t met before. So the possibilities nowadays are endless when it comes to genealogy and learning more about where you came from. And many families organize, for example, family reunions, where all the family in the country comes together in one place. This year, it’s probably not going to happen. But, in general, they organize these meetings, and you can meet cousins and people who you’ve never met before, but they are your family. They’re part of your, of your roots.

So I want to tell you about my roots and then I want to hear from you. So as you know, I was born in Texas, I’m American, but my ancestors are not originally from the United States. My forefathers, my ancestors are from Ireland on my mother’s side. My maternal ancestors are from Ireland and my paternal, on my father’s side, ancestors are from Scotland. So they emigrated, okay, so that means to move from one country to another, many, many generations ago, to the United States. So those are my roots. So I’m American, but I also have this heritage of what we call “Scotch-Irish” or from Scotland and Ireland.

So I want to hear from you. What are your roots? Do you know anything about your genealogy? Tell me more. Does your family follow this? Do you have information about this? And if so, if there is a long history in your family, and they have moved or they have emigrated, what is, where are they from? And have you visited these places? Like I have visited Scotland and I have visited Ireland where my ancestors are from. So have you visited the land of your ancestors if it’s not the same country or the same place that you live in now. So I look forward to reading your comments. And it’s important to celebrate our roots. So I hope that not just on roots day, any day you will be,you will be interested and be excited to discover more about where you come from because that’s what makes us who we are. So I hope you enjoyed the class. I hope you learn some new vocabulary related to families, genealogy, and I will see you next week. Thanks again for watching. Bye!