In the story “Indian Education,” written by Sherman Alexie, Alexie tells the story of multiple events that happened during his lifetime. I can relate to a majority of those events, but the event that I can personally relate to the most is his move during his seventh grade year. Like Alexie, I was forced to switch schools from Moran to Humboldt; however, my move was in the sixth grade. Just like Alexie, I was forced to say goodbye to classmates who I had spent the last seven years growing up with. I realized that my life was changing completely in the blink of an eye. After struggling to adjust to the switch I had to encounter that first year, I learned a great lesson: “With change often comes new opportunities.” Unfortunately, when I was told …show more content…
It was okay to start a new chapter of my life and make new friends at Humboldt. On the first day of school, a seventh grade girl with brown, curly hair, named Haylie, came up to me in the gymnasium to ask me what my name was, and where I had moved from. I told her my name was Annalise, and that I had moved from Moran. Little did I know, this girl would be my best friend for the next six years of my middle and high school career. My new classmates also accepted me and made me feel welcomed. I realized these people would become my new family. Throughout middle school, I noticed that our class was different than the others. We were always the smallest and closest class. Everyone talked to everyone, and we made a lot of memories that I will never forget. This closeness is something I had hoped our class would carry on throughout our high school …show more content…
As freshmen, we realized the athletic competition was better, and there was multiple different clubs we could join. The classes we could take got harder, and we had just switched to a one-to-one curriculum, so this meant everyone received a laptop. This is also when I set my goal of keeping a 4.0 GPA all throughout high school. These were opportunities I did not think about when I first found out I was moving. The clubs and the sports gave my classmates and myself a chance to make friends with the three grades above us. Our class slowly drifted apart as we branched out and made new friends in different grades. Our sophomore and junior year was similar to my freshman year. We stayed in our different groups as we continued to explore our interests. Junior year came along with many different changes. Because there were very few senior girl athletes, the junior class had the opportunity to take the role as leaders on the court and on the field. Underclassmen looked up to the juniors for leadership and advice. This opportunity helped change me as a person. I had to show the underclassmen what hard work looked like, and what it took to be successful. This opportunity also made me realize how hard I had to work if I wanted to continue to be successful in athletics and eventually play college volleyball. My junior year also provided my classmates and I with the opportunity to take
Encountering struggles in life defines one’s character and speaks volumes about their strength, ambition, and flexibility. Through struggles, sacrifice, and tragedy, Junior in The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie, adapts to survive difficult situations and faces his problems head-on. As he makes life changing decisions, adapts to an unfamiliar culture, and finds himself amongst misery and heartbreak, Junior demonstrates resilience to overcome adversity and struggles.
“But we reservation Indians don’t get to realize our dreams. We don’t get those chances.” (p. 13) In The Absolutely True Diary of A Part Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie, Junior, the narrator, is an Indian teenage boy living on a reservation, where no one's dreams or ideas are heard. The Indians on the reservation feel hopeless because they are isolated and disenfranchised. Junior learns how to cope with his hopelessness and breaks through the hopeless reservation life to find his dreams. Examining his journey provides important examples for the reader.
Everything I dreamed about for my senior year was taken from me the day that I moved. When I left my old school I not only said goodbye to my friends, but I also said goodbye to an easy senior year. At my new school I am just another body. No one knows who I am. I talk to everyone I meet, trying to make conversation, but yet I still eat alone in the cafeteria every day, listening to everyone laugh while I try to hold back my tears.
Imagine growing up in a society where a person is restricted to learn because of his or her ethnicity? This experience would be awful and very emotional for one to go through. Sherman Alexie and Fredrick Douglas are examples of prodigies who grew up in a less fortunate community. Both men experienced complications in similar and different ways; these experiences shaped them into men who wanted equal education for all. To begin, one should understand the writers background. Sherman Alexie wrote about his life as a young Spokane Indian boy and the life he experienced (page 15). He wrote to encourage people to step outside their comfort zone and be herd throughout education. Similar to Alexie’s life experience, Fredrick
In "Indian Education" by Sherman Alexie, the story is about our narrator of the story Victor. Telling the sad, miserable cruelty and the emotions that his fellow students and teachers gave him from 1st grade all the way through 12th grade. The meaning of this story at first seems the most current for kids in school; bullying each other and calling each other names but the story goes much deeper than that. It shows a reality of the life on the reservation and how the education system is terrible and demeaning to other children who are considered soft spoken. Two pieces of dialogue that were the most interesting to me happened to be "Give me your lunch if you're just going to throw it up," because it ends with the sentence "There is more than one way to starve.
How White people assumed they were better than Indians and tried to bully a young boy under the US Reservation. Alexie was bullied by his classmates, teammates, and teachers since he was young because he was an Indian. Even though Alexie didn’t come from a good background, he found the right path and didn’t let his hands down. He had two ways to go to, either become a better, educated and strong person, either be like his brother Steven that was following a bad path, where Alexie chose to become a better and educated person. I believe that Alexie learned how to get stronger, and stand up for himself in the hard moments of his life by many struggles that he passed through. He overcame all his struggles and rose above them
In “Indian Education”, Sherman Alexie stresses to his readers and audience the effects of discrimination within educational facilities. Sherman Alexie grew up in Wellpinit, Washington on the Spokane Reservation with his parents. Sherman’s father is a Coeur d’Alene Indian who married his mother, a Spoken Indian. Through his grade school years, Sherman endured teasing from his fellow classmates and disapproval from his school teachers when he exceeded their expectations. It wasn’t until high school that Sherman realized that his educational opportunities were limited compared to the white race. This pushed Sherman to make the decision of attending a nearby farm town high school in the town of Reardon. However, during his high school years, the factor of discrimination was present as Sherman tried to build his education.
Adolescents experience a developmental journey as they transition from child to adult, and in doing so are faced with many developmental milestones. Physical, cognitive, social and emotional changes are occurring during this tumultuous stage of life, and making sense of one’s self and identity becomes a priority. Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian addresses the challenges of adolescence in an engaging tale, but deals with minority communities and cultures as well.
“The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” is a humorous and intuitive novel written by Sherman Alexie. The reader gets an insight into the everyday life of a fourteen year old hydrocephalic Indian boy named Arnold Spirit, also referred to as Junior Spirit. He is living on the Spokane Indian reservation and is seen as an outcast by all the other Indians, due to his medical condition. Against all odds Arnold expands his hope, leaves his school on the reservation and faces new obstacles to obtain a more promising future at a school off the reservation. The novel is told through Arnold’s voice, thoughts, actions and experiences. Alexie incorporates one point of view, different themes and settings, such as poverty, friendship, Spokane and Reardan within Arnold’s journey to illustrate the different hardships he must overcome to gain a higher education.
Indian Education written by Sheman Alexie, describes the story of one young men that had overcome obstacle in his life, when people surround him tried to oppose by causing bulling and prejudicing him because of his appearance and fellow actions. Alexie writes this story to emphasize how different type of people are prejudice from their own culture and people out of their culture in a daily base. In fact, he describe a time when he was being judge by his teacher by accusing him of being an alcoholic because his others fellow who were Indians like him also drink. The author also chooses to title the story Indian Education because of the influence that it could have in many Indians as well as other people when reading it. As human people encounter
In Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, the main character Arnold, also known as Junior, has many health issues, and notably stands out in the crowd. It does not help that he is a poor Indian boy that lives on a reservation, and that he decides to go to an all-white high school. Many of his experiences at school, and on the Reservation, impact his identity. Experience is the most influential factor in shaping a person’s identity because it helps gain confidence, it teaches new things, and it changes one’s outlook on the world.
In every culture, society or community there are always mentors who play influential roles in raising the next generation. In the novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie, Junior has many mentors that guided him to make important and crucial decisions throughout his life. His geometry teacher, Mr. P made Junior see his true potential above and beyond the classroom and even outside the reservation. Junior joined a new school outside the reservation where he met his Coach, he had pushed Junior past his limits as he expecting the most from him. In addition, Junior’s grandmother was a strong role model and taught Junior to tolerate and to accept everybody. Therefore, Junior benefited from his relationships with Mr.
The author, Sherman Alexie, is extremely effective through his use of ethos and ethical appeals. By sharing his own story of a sad, poor, indian boy, simply turning into something great. He establishes his authority and character to the audiences someone the reader can trust. “A little indian boy teaches himself to read at an early age and advances quickly…If he’d been anything but an Indian boy living in the reservations, he might have been called a prodigy.” Alexie mentions these two different ideas to show that he did have struggles and also to give the audience a chance to connect with his struggles and hopefully follow the same journey in becoming something great. By displaying his complications and struggles in life with stereotypical facts, Alexie is effective as the speaker because he has lived the live of the intended primary audience he is trying to encourage which would be young Indian
Adjusting to another culture is a difficult concept, especially for children in their school classrooms. In Sherman Alexie’s, “Indian Education,” he discusses the different stages of a Native Americans childhood compared to his white counterparts. He is describing the schooling of a child, Victor, in an American Indian reservation, grade by grade. He uses a few different examples of satire and irony, in which could be viewed in completely different ways, expressing different feelings to the reader. Racism and bullying are both present throughout this essay between Indians and Americans. The Indian Americans have the stereotype of being unsuccessful and always being those that are left behind. Through Alexie’s negativity and humor in his essay, it is evident that he faces many issues and is very frustrated growing up as an American Indian. Growing up, Alexie faces discrimination from white people, who he portrays as evil in every way, to show that his childhood was filled with anger, fear, and sorrow.
It was the second semester of fourth grade year. My parents had recently bought a new house in a nice quite neighborhood. I was ecstatic I always wanted to move to a new house. I was tired of my old home since I had already explored every corner, nook, and cranny. The moment I realized I would have to leave my old friends behind was one of the most devastating moments of my life. I didn’t want to switch schools and make new friends. Yet at the same time was an interesting new experience.