As I reflect it becomes clear to me that I enjoyed writing my junior year in high school. My English teacher Mr. Duckworth was a one of a kind teacher. His classroom was a normal classroom setting with the desk all line up behind one another. All of his students would face the white erase board that was located in the front of the room. He would typically sit at his desk leaning back in his chair giving us instructions on what was to be done in the class. As we sit in the class, all I can hear are my classmates laughing and joking around as he spoke. he would already have an essay topic on the board that was to the right of us that he could easily see from his desk. This was an everyday routine for all of his classes. As we begin to write, I noticed how different classmates of mine would get up to ask for help with their essay. The students who never asked for help usually would end up with a lot of red markings on their essays.
All the students loved Mr. Duckworth with his round glasses and semi bald head. He always wore a button down shirt with khaki pants. He would often talk about different situations that involved his family that would make us laugh. I loved going to his class and writing different papers. Mr. Duckworth one of the best teachers I have ever had. Every time we would come into his class, his teacher assistant Mr. Allen would be sitting right next to him waiting for our class to come in. they both expressed that our class was the best class that he had. As they sat and talked, and would casually lean back and introduce to us what he wanted done.
After introducing the assignment, Mr. Duckworth would stand in front of the class and give us an example of what type of paper he wanted. His use of language always kep...
... middle of paper ...
...is students scored either a 5 or 6 on the test, which was the highest you could score. Our class was the only people who scored that high throughout the entire 11th grade class. I begin to realize that with his criticism it made me a better writer.
I use to think that any kind of criticism would harm me. I was afraid to ask people to read any paper of mind giving their opinion. Although I thought I was a good writer, Mr. Duckworth helped me realize that everybody needs help when it comes to writing. If it was beginning an essay or not knowing what to do, he was there to help us. Now I realize that asking people for help not only makes me a better writer but it also means that I can take criticism better. Mr. Duckworth encouraged all his students to be the best that they can be and that helped me out a lot. Criticism never harms a person it just makes them better.
Opinions. One quote I disagreed with was, “It seems to me that middle-class culture, and schooling gratuitously and foolishly rob children of the pleasures of the physical and intellectual work of learning generally and writing in particular” (21). This is invalid. Not everyone grows up around writing, and reading. Sometimes reading and writing isn’t fun for everyone. It can be boring, or even hard to follow. Reading and writing are a choice, not a requirement. Following onto that quote was one of my favorite quotations by Savannah which stated, “I despaired of becoming a writer whenever a grade or comment even hinted I had not learned and meticulously followed all the rules of spelling, punctuation, and grammar” (3). I do agree with this quote because criticism does break down one’s integrity, and devotion to their work to keep on going. If there is continuous negative feedback given, then it prevents writers from continuing on. I have always struggled as a writer, and I do not appreciate receiving negative criticism. However; when I was younger, my parents had always told me that “criticism is the key to success”. In order to succeed, one must fail as an individual to set higher goals, and actions
The purpose of my memoir is to awaken the power of Sociological Imagination in an attempt to analyze my own life experiences through sociological lens in order to understand how my life and opportunities in society have been shaped by race, class and ethnicity.
Ralph Fletcher’s story in the beginning of the introduction quickly grabbed my attention. Although the story was humorous, I found there to be a lot of truth in it. In the story, the young students realize that their teacher will take anything and make them write about it. It seems to be that the teacher does this so often, that the students are afraid to take joy in the simple things. The students don’t want to assigned another writing prompt. Fletcher then says that teacher need to be sure “not to get too evangelical about teaching writing.” I agree with this statement. It is very important to teach students how to write, but as a teacher we need to know when we should take a break so the students do not get burnt out. Once students get tired
I have very few recollections of my early years and the exact age I was able to read and write. Some of my earliest memories are vague on the topic of my literacy. However, I do remember small memories, such as, learning how to write my name in cursive, winning prizes for reading, and crying over every assigned high school essay. Over the last twelve years my literacy grew rapidly with the help of teachers, large school libraries, my family, and so on. There is always room for my literacy skills to grow, but my family’s help and positive attitude towards my education, the school systems I have been a part of, and the horrible required essays from high school helped obtain the level, skills, habits, and processes that I use as part of my literacy
Throughout my childhood, the idea of having a college education was greatly stressed. As a result, it was my duty as the next generational child, to excel in my studies and achieve a life of prosperity and success. Learning became the basic foundation of my growth. Therefore, my youth was overtaken by many hours spent reading and writing what was known to be correct "Standard" English. I first found this to be a great shortcoming, but as I grew older, I began to realize the many rewards acquired by having the ability to be literate.
It was finally time to head to gym class in the afternoon where we were instructed to take part of a physical test. This test would determine how fit or unfit we are based on a system that was implemented by those with greater authority, on which concluded that it was on such a scale society should be based on. So it was that afternoon that I preformed the tasks that were instructed on to me and my peers. I was able to completed them to my utmost potential which can be consider to be something not so distinctive. It was on this day that I was mocked by one my peers of my lack of ability to preform the instructed physical tasks, that was a no brainer to such a fit individual like himself. It
The story of my history as a writer is a very long one. My writing has come full circle. I have changed very much throughout the years, both as I grew older and as I discovered more aspects of my own personality. The growth that I see when I look back is incredible, and it all seems to revolve around my emotions. I have always been a very emotional girl who feels things keenly. All of my truly memorable writing, looking back, has come from experiences that struck a chord with my developing self. This assignment has opened my eyes, despite my initial difficulty in writing it. When I was asked to write down my earliest memory of writing, at first I drew a blank. All of a sudden, it became very clear to me, probably because it had some childhood trauma associated with it.
My literacy journey began long before I had actually learned how to read or write. While recently going through baby pictures with my mother, we came across a photo of my father and I book shopping on the Logos boat, a boat that would come to my island every year that was filled with books for our purchasing. Upon looking at this picture, my mother was quite nostalgic and explained how they began my journey to literacy through experiences like this. My earliest memory of experiencing literature was as a small child. My parents would read bedtime stories to me each night before I went to bed. I vividly remember us sitting on the bed together with this big book of “365 bedtime stories for 365 days” and we read one story each day until we had
As a child, I have always been fond of reading books. My mother would read to me every single night before I went to bed and sometimes throughout the day. It was the most exciting time of the day when she would open the cabinet, with what seemed to be hundreds of feet tall, of endless books to choose from. When she read to me, I wanted nothing more than to read just like her. Together, we worked on reading every chance we had. Eventually I got better at reading alone and could not put a book down. Instead of playing outside with my brothers during the Summer, I would stay inside in complete silence and just read. I remember going to the library with my mom on Saturdays, and staying the entire day. I looked forward to it each and every week.
Throughout my childhood I was never very good at reading. It was something I always struggled with and I grew to not like reading because of this. As a child my mom and dad would read books to me before I went to bed and I always enjoyed looking at the pictures and listening. Then, as I got older my mom would have me begin to read with her out loud. I did not like this because I was not a good reader and I would get so frustrated. During this time I would struggle greatly with reading the pages fluently, I also would mix up some of the letters at times. I also struggled with comprehension, as I got older. My mom would make me read the Junie B. Jones books by myself and then I would have to tell her what happened. Most
The first English course I took in college was a basic introduction to writing, during this course we learned how to write a good essay, we learned techniques to improve our writing and we learned how to organize our ideas and put them in a logical manner. We did a lot of discussions and during this class was the first time that I was involve in peer reviewing. My second course I took was with the same professor, Mr. Braun. I believe he was a great educator and he really showed interest in helping their students that’s why when I had the opportunity I choose him to be my professor
I loved how he gave everyone in our homeroom nicknames, for instance, mine was “Higgy-Baby”. To this day I do not know how he came up with a name like that, but I know that while I was in his classroom, I was never called just Alyssa. While I learned many new and interesting things in his science class, I remember more of the life lessons that he taught during his homeroom. He was one of the teachers that was there for me when life got rough, he looked out for me during and outside of class. For me, knowing that I had him keeping an eye out for me made me feel safer going to school again.
We are now at the end of year. The students are restless, and they can barely wait till summer break. They have thought very little about how their literacy skills have changed throughout the year, but I have. One of the questions I was asked to reflect on, was the challenges I faced with creating my literacy profile. The major challenge was finding samples that related to my chosen standards. This was a lot harder than I original thought. There were several times where I had to create a lesson so that I would have a sample that showed that standard. Other challenges I faced were trying to remember to collect the samples and finding time to assess my binder so I could see each student progression throughout the school year. The overall challenge was trying to find the time to reflect, assemble, and assess my literacy profile binder. On the other side of that coin, bring together all the components of my literacy profile binder has
I grew up in the 80s (born in 1977) and while I am sure that era impacted me in more ways than I am even aware of, I think that it was my own personal home life that set me on my current path. My mother was much older (she was 40 when I was born) and only had a 6th grade education. My father was 19 when I was born and had his GED. They had a tumultuous relationship for obvious and private reasons. They divorced when I was seven years old and I remained with my mother. Both parents worked in manual labor type jobs—my mother cleaned houses and my father repaired mobile homes. Neither knew how to be parents. My mother was an alcoholic who, I now believe, was also bipolar, and my father was just
My earliest memories about writing was 4th grade, it was the first year of me not being in a bilingual classroom environment. Ever since then I remember having difficulty in writing assignments. If I recall correctly, every 2 weeks we were to write an essay and 3 students would go to the front of the classroom and read their stories. At first my classmates would volunteer, however, towards the end of the year the teacher caught on that it