Personal Narrative: My First Year In High School

Most people don’t remember much from their elementary school years. Maybe a fun time on the playground, or that one friend that you had that you never talk to anymore. For some reason I remember a lot from first grade, probably because I didn’t like my teacher very much. Another reason was because I sat next to this boy who always took my stuff and wrecked it, like pencils, marker cases, and he even drew in my notebooks. But the one memory that sticks in my brain from first grade was the one where I almost got put into my schools special education program. Now this might not sound like an alarming thing, especially if I needed to go into the program to get extra help. But the thing is I never needed special education; I just needed the courage to read out loud. Throughout my

Now, I could have taken those classes when I was in the special education program, but I don’t think that I would have had the courage to do so. If I wouldn’t have taken those classes, I wouldn’t have the grasp of the subjects that I am taking in college now. Because of this experience in first grade my confidence levels in reading, education, and my life have changed.

In my first grade class we had to take a reading placement test, it was a benchmark of where you started and where you were going to go, sort of like a graded pre-test. So we all had to go out into the hallway one at a time, sit at a desk out in the hall, and read two pages that she told you out of a book. She also had another copy of the same book in her hands to make sure you weren’t just making up the story as you went. I remember all of my classmates going into the hallway one by one with our teacher, coming back, and telling everybody that it was, “The hardest book I’ve ever tried to read”. Since my last name was at the very end of the list, I was the last to go so I had the most time to become nervous. When she finally got to my name, it was almost