Category: Module 1 – Literacy Narrative (Page 1 of 11)

Literacy Narrative

September 27, 2021 / Hongdi Deng / 0 Comments

I grew up in a restructured family, my parents both have ordinary education and are engaged in ordinary jobs. I also have a half brother. Even though he is 10 years older than me, our relationship is still very close. People always say that parents are the best teachers, but I don’t think so. They never discipline me harshly. My father has always been busy with his job, and my mother only graduated in junior high school. They can’t teach me a lot, but I am very thankful for them. Because when the other parents try to give as much knowledge and truth as they can to their children, my parents chose to trust me and Let me decide my own path for myself. This kind of education sounds risky, but it works very well for me. They make me more independent and smarter than other kids. And my brother is another very important guide for me. Because of his age, He does not have the stubbornness of our parents’ generation, and he is more mature and stable than my peers. He gave me the most important advantage. He came to the United States 5 years earlier than me. He lived, went to school, and worked alone here without family company and financial support. His various experiences are often not defeated when I encounter difficulties.

My temperament is generous and optimistic. Some small things that seem to be taken for granted to others will make me feel very happy, and I often help others and try to spread these little happiness to those around me. So I think about everything. When I encounter something unsatisfactory, I laugh it off, face it hard and find a way to solve it. Life is a process of repeating the experience of “high and low undulating waves.” So I can deeply understand this. When encountering setbacks, I will grit my teeth, break through difficulties, and move forward courageously. It hurts my body to get angry, and the hot magnetic field also hurts people around me, so I don’t often lose my temper. So it is easy for me to mingle with others and have a good interpersonal relationship.

Before I was in the 11th grade, I lived a boring life, only going to school and playing computer games every day. But as my friends and I grew up slowly, my heart gradually yearned for a life outside of home and school. We will try different things, there will be joy and difficulty in the process. I still remember the first time I traveled abroad. I went to Miami with my friends. On the first night after we got off the plane, we talked about our itinerary in the hotel expectantly, so that we didn’t fall asleep very late. But the next day we didn’t feel tired at all, and set off full of vitality. We spent a wonderful day in Key West and watched the most beautiful sunset on the beach. But after that we lost the car keys and we immediately realized that it would be a difficult night for us. Even if we come up with countermeasures immediately, we are always more prone to accidents for those who are inexperienced. We only have 3 mobile phones that are about to die. We try to fall asleep on the ground or on a bench, but the cold and noisy wind keeps preventing us from falling asleep. This is a dilemma we have never been in. When we eat the food that we only have money for, the shriveled bread makes us smile happier than playing.

I don’t like who I used to be, but for me life is a process of constant improvement, and there is no regret. Whether it is a boring or wonderful part of my life, or a wrong or correct decision, I will be grateful to them. Because there is good and bad is a wonderful journey.

Unit 1 Project

October 20, 2021 / Kcamacho / 1 Comment

I have been making poetry and music for as long as I remember. I was the kid in elementary school free-styling at the lunch table, I was the kid who enjoyed learning new words in English classes, one of the only kids who liked being assigned poetry homework or assignments or learning about poetry in class. I remember teachers telling the class we would focus on poetry in the next class and everyone would get upset except me and when the time came to make our own poetry I remember everyone coming to me for help. It was not until middle school that i started taking my poetry and music seriously. That’s around the time I wrote and recorded a song for the first time. Since then I have only grew with my music but I can easily say the biggest step I have taken to date is when I performed on stage for the first time.

One night not too many months ago I was out on my way to get some food not far from my neighborhood and as I was on my way to get that fresh, hot beef patty with cheese and pepperoni over cocoa bread that I had been craving all day I see a rap artist who is famous in the underground rap scene who grew up in the area hanging out with a couple of his friends across the street from the pizzeria. I crossed the street and greeted him and proceeded to tell him how I like his work he thanked me. I told him I know its hard to gain traction in the music industry with the type of music he makes because lyrically profound pieces of work are not appreciated in today’s society like they once were. He agreed and asked if I make music because he picked up on my passion for what i was saying about music through my tone. I told him that I have been making music for years and he could definitely hear something but that i had to go to the pizzeria first. I asked if he wants anything while I was there, he lets me know that he is fine, and then i made my way across the street.

I entered the pizzeria in a bit of a nervous state because there had only been a couple times prior that i performed a song in front of others, excluding the times me and my friends would freestyle for fun. I remember telling myself that it was not the time to be panicking and I eased myself up. I ordered my food and told the man at the register that i would be back in a few minutes. I then left the pizzeria and made my way across the street back to where the artist was with his friends. When i got there he asked if I was ready and then proceeded to call his friend who also doubled as his manager over to listen as well. I performed one of my most recent songs at the time and after finishing his manager let me know he was impressed, a statement to which the artist agreed to. They took down my information and I took down their’s and as I was getting ready to leave the artist invited me to his album release event which he was holding a week from then. He then handed me a shirt from his clothing line and told me to wear it on the day of, and that him and all his friends would be wearing pieces from the clothing line as well. I thanked him told him I would see him there. I was feeling proud of my work and excited, so much so that i forgot to go back to the pizzeria to pick up my beef patty ad instead went straight home.

A week passed and so the day of the album release party came. It was going to be an outside event near where I met the artist which as I mentioned earlier is close by my home. He had told me to be there at 3 but i wanted to be early to show I cared. I got there around 2:30 with the shirt I had been gifted already on and saw the artists’ manager, the man who was with the artists the day i performed the song. He greeted me and let me know that the artist would be here soon. I asked if they needed help setting up and he told me “don’t worry about none of that your here to chill today, come sit down with us” and he brought me over to a group of his friends sitting on beach chairs on the corner of the block and introduced me, “Yo this is the n***a i was telling ya about that came over to us the other day and spit his s**t. I’m telling ya, HE GOT IT”. I greeted everyone and took a seat on an empty beach chair. About an hour passed and the artist arrived in his blacked out RAM truck. It was blacked out from the tinted windows to the custom black rims. He stepped out the truck and instantly a crowd of people started t form around the truck. Photographers, friends, fans, etc. He welcomed everybody and had to take photos with at least a hundred different people before before the crowd died down. Moments after it died down he made his way over to where i was sitting. He greeted everyone including myself and let me know he appreciated me coming out. We all talked for a while about a bunch of random topics and then he made his way over to help get things going now that he was there. He had to get the food, the DJ, a dunk tank he had someone come set up, and a tow truck with a huge flatbed he had his friend bring over to use as a stage organized and ready for the event.

For the next couple hours i just sat there eating and talking with every one, mostly about my music and just music in general. As i was finishing my food, a couple empanadas if you were wondering, i heard the artist announce this on the loud speaker, “yo if i told you that you could perform today go hit the DJ booth and make sure everything is ready for you to get on the flatbed with the mic”. I guess you can say I saw the opportunity and jumped at it because no sooner that he finished announcing this I was next to him preparing to have a conversation that I wont soon forget. I told him “yo so wassup you gon’ let me perform or what, i could do that song i did for you the other day”. After i said this he took a moment to think to himself and then responded “Ight bro go ahead, imma give you this chance, you’ve performed before?”. I responded with but a simple “No” and turned around and made my way to the DJ booth before he could change his mind. I got set up with the DJ and moments later I was getting on the flatbed with the mic. I had never performed in front of strangers except for the one time i performed to the artist and his manager a week earlier, much less ever been on a stage… flatbed, same thing. My heart was racing and it was even worse when i looked around and saw how big the crowd really was. There had to be at least two hundred people in attendance. I was reminded of how i felt in the pizzeria a week earlier when i was getting ready to perform the same song for the artist and his manager. Its a feeling you love and you hate, like the thrill of a scary roller coaster, or a haunted house, or skydiving, you get the idea. I focused up as I heard my song start to play behind me and before i even started performing the artist tells the DJ to shut it down and tells me to pass him the mic.

Nobody had any idea what was going on and as you can imagine, I was panicking. I pass the mic down to him as i was on stage… flatbed, and he was on the ground and as soon as the DJ stopped the music he started speaking to gather everybody’s attention. Everybody got dead silent to hear what he was going to say and what he said shocked me. He spoke into the mic and uttered this, “Yo this n***a be hassling me whenever he see me, but I love it, i can tell he’s hungry. When I tell ya he is hungry I really mean it, he was here two hours before me just to show how dedicated he is “. When he said that it surprised me because he wasn’t around, his manager must have told him. But none the less he continued, “Look, this is what we’re going to do, this his first time performing so what I need from ya’ll, if its fire make it clear, let him know. If its wack make it clear, let him know”. He then said “I got faith in you so here’s your chance, do something with it” and passed me the mic. The DJ started playing my song and i started performing. I gave that performance my all. By the end i was sweating and out of breath but the energy i brought seemed to have paid off because as soon as i finished i looked up and saw all the cameras taking pictures and videos. I saw the flashes of phones and Polaroid cameras, I heard the cheers and applauds, I saw the whole crowd ecstatic. It was an amazing feeling but that amazing feeling got even better when I saw the artist reaching to give me a handshake. He looked the happiest out of everyone including myself. I will never forget him screaming out the words “There you go! There you go!”. I had just performed for the first time in my career and I couldn’t be happier. A milestone moment I will never forget.

After that day my career has only grown along with my relationship with the artist and his manager. I now consider them my close friends. As for my career, I can easily say it is currently at the highest point it has ever been and shows no sign of going anywhere but up. I feel as if I am growing in all areas of my life. I will always remember that day as the day my life as a writer, poet, artist, changed forever. As i’m finishing this paper up now I am getting ready to go meet up with them at a recording studio to work. Life is great and only getting greater and I owe a lot of it to my first time on stage.

UNIT 1 LITERACY NARRATIVE: FINAL DRAFT

October 6, 2021 / camila / 0 Comments

I have always struggled with my english and writing classes. It was never a subject I enjoyed learning about, and my hands would always get tired from writing with a pencil for too long. I also was a very 2D person, I was not interested in looking at things “outside the box”, I just took things as it is and didn’t have the urge to know more. I was basically the walking nightmare of any ELA teacher. This all changed when I met my freshmen english teacher, Mr. Strafach. As we were forced to do ice breakers and just basic introductions between teacher and student, he began to understand my dislike for english classes, which included any sort of writing or reading. Luckily, most of our beginning assignments were just personal narratives and short stories, so it only required a bit of writing and not much thinking, but this one winter break assignment would change my perspective on the subject completely. Previously, Mr. Strafach had told me I reminded him of a character in one of his favorite novels, and it wasn’t until we were assigned our own novels to read for our winter break assignment that I discovered which character that was. It was Holden Caulfield from “The Catcher in The Rye”.

The Catcher in The Rye is a novel that I could read and reread over and over again, yet still not understand at all. A kid gets kicked out of boarding school, goes through a bunch of crazy events in just the span of a few days, and somehow there’s still a bigger picture to it? The fact that I went straight into the mindset of trying to figure out how I was similar to the main character, Holden, didn’t make it any easier to understand. I began with trying to break down Holden and seeing who he was as a person, and he genuinely pissed me off. I did not see the appeal of his character and quite frankly he reminded me of all the negative parts of myself. This made me feel even more stuck on figuring him out because I felt like my teacher used this as a way to get me self aware of the mistakes I was making as a student, since I definitely was not the best. This led to me to constantly rereading some parts in his perspective, and sometimes I’d just sit and daydream as Holden, as a form of trying to understanding what lead him to some of the decisions he made in the book and that’s when it fully hit me. It got to a point where I genuinely started to enjoy going into deep thought over this book, something I never imagined myself doing in the, what was, 14 years of my life. The same issues I had with reading previously, seeing between the small lines, getting the smaller picture, was all coming to me naturally only because I had semi interest in what I was reading. I just wasn’t putting enough effort previously into really understanding what I was reading because it just didn’t spark any interest in me. Being able to achieve this level of understanding in a novel really struck a cord with me, as I’ve never experienced anything like that before and it led to me getting the highest grade in my assignment in that class. I was able to describe Holden’s thoughts in certain situations during the novel, I was able to point out the the start and “end” of Holden’s manic episode, and just the ending of the book was something I could write an entire essay about. I’m very thankful to Mr. Strafach for assigning me that book, as it allowed for me to understand a world I never thought I’d be able to get into. I still have the school copy of the book today, including all my annotations and pages with folded corners in order to save all the pages and information I thought had more thought put into it than meets the eye. The method of trying to relate myself to the character, or simply put, “putting myself in their shoes”, truly made the test questions, short answers, and essays, a lot easier to write.

This also worked really well with information readings, and with more persuasive style essays. I basically put myself in the shoes of the author, or reporter, rather than a character. It really helped out, as It was much easier for me to tell what side the author is trying to support, especially if it seems like a more neutral approach. Once I got into that “author” mindset, I was also able to identity what the main points they were trying to convey are, as it’s something that they would mention once, but write paragraphs and paragraphs defending and trying to explain their thinking, or sometimes evidence, in the best way possible. With the constant annotation of The Catcher in The Rye, I definitely learned on how to highlight, or jot down, the things that were significant to the point I was trying to prove. Previously, I would claim that the entire piece of reading was important, as that’s the entire point of writing it, but with the infamous novel, I noticed that the literal most important parts are never just mentioned once, it’s constantly repeated over and over again, in hopes of the reader taking note and keeping that idea in mind. It may not be in the most obvious way, but it’s there, sometimes more blatantly than other examples.

I truly couldn’t thank Mr. Strafach and J.D Salinger enough for opening the doors and allowing me to understand and fully appreciate reading and writing. I always doubted my abilities due to my non existent interest for the topics, but all I needed was one really confusing novel to fully understand the beauty that is having skills in both reading and writing. It truly changes your perspectives on a lot of things and I felt like I became a much more open minding person, not only in what I read but in real life as well. Going from someone who saw everything in ‘2D’ to trying my best to see things in ‘4D’ greatly changed my opinion on the subject, and I hope it is a skill I can continue growing as I also grow.

Education narrative- Final draft

October 4, 2021 / Kevin Chabla / 0 Comments

There have been many turning points in my education over the course of my life. Despite the various events that have impacted my education in a positive manner, I see the seventh grade, my English teacher, and my Math teacher as the three major causes for the impact on my education. They all played a major part in my school life and helped me out drastically. For these reasons, I was able to do better in school, stay motivated, and have confidence throughout my entire life.

A turning point in my education was in seventh grade when I was told that my grades seriously mattered. Not that my grades didn’t matter before, but this time it truly was very important. I was informed by my teachers that the grades I get in 7th grade would affect which high schools would accept my application. Back then, I always found myself doing average in school and not really caring if I didn’t get the best grades, but as I got older, I knew that it was time to get serious. My teachers constantly reminding me that my grades that year would matter did both good and bad things to me. It was bad because I felt very stressed just at the thought of getting bad grades. I felt as if me getting bad grades would result in me ending up at a bad high school and not do my best when it comes to school. While it stressed me out, it also in a way, lit up a fire inside of me and just motivated me to do the best I have ever done when it comes to my grades. As a result of this, I did everything I had to do, and not just that, but I also made sure that everything I did was done flawlessly. Consequently, after a grueling school year, I received my report card and saw that I had 95’s and above for all the classes I took. This made me very happy and made me realize that school isn’t so hard. It showed me that all it took for me to do well was time and dedication. Ever since then, I have tried my hardest to do my best in school and in life as well

In my junior year of high school, I had the fortune of attending an English class taught by an amazing teacher. My English teacher that year, Ms. Lally, was someone who I am very grateful to have met. Before I was assigned her class, I rarely saw her around and didn’t know her. Aside from freshman year, this was the first time that I walked into a class without really knowing the teacher. Even though this might seem like a bad thing, it made me very interested as to how my teacher might be. Will she be a strict teacher? Is she a teacher that develops close relationships with their students? Does she assign a lot of work? These are some of the many questions I had walking into her classroom for the very first time. After a couple of months of attending her class, it made me realize that her class was my favorite out of them all. The way she taught her class was new and different from the English classes I had previously attended. Her class personally felt like a breath of fresh air. Unlike my other English classes, I wasn’t just taught something and handed multiple papers to do. This class felt much more interactive and genuinely made it fun and interesting to attend. Not only did she teach me things from her class, but she also taught me things I could use outside of her class. An example of this is her teaching me how to stay motivated. She always said to think about the reward at the end of the road. As a result of this, the motivation I gave myself seriously impacted my education.

Another person who impacted my education in a great manner was my freshman year Math teacher. Math has always been my weakness when it comes to school. From elementary school all the way to today, my mathematic skills have never been that great. While they may have got better, there’s still a lot of room for improvement. However, at the beginning of freshman year, I had realized that my math wasn’t good. My eighth-grade teacher did not really care much for teaching math and decided to give us tests and homework with math questions a fourth grader could solve. Consequently, after getting countless A’s in math, you can imagine how confident I was walking into my math class in high school. After a few classes and walk-in exams, it became clear to me that I had walked into a class that would constantly stress me out. Walking inside the classroom on a test day was like walking into a Best Buy on Black Friday. You just knew it was going to be bad. However, after multiple bad test grades, Mr. Crespo decided that he didn’t want the students to not be doing great in his class. For this reason, he went and had a one on one conversation with the students who weren’t doing well. When it was my turn to talk to him, I was very honest with him. I told him I was struggling to understand how to do certain things and that I was very stressed and felt very demoralized. As soon as I finished telling him about this, he gave me a speech that lasted around twenty minutes. The purpose of his speech was to help me out and to make me confident which did in fact work. He made me believe that I can do well inside his class and out in the real world as well. After his speech, I had felt more confident than I have ever felt before. With this confidence, I was able to study relentlessly and tell myself “I got this”. Mr. Crespo was a teacher who had an immense impact when it came to my education as he gave me the confidence to be able to prosper not only in his class, but in every class I was currently taking and would take in the future.

In conclusion, the impact that the seventh grade and my high school English and Math teacher had on me was incredibly positive. It is tremendously obvious that without them, the way I see and do when it comes to my education would certainly not be the same. They were all able to turn something bad about my education into something positive. Thanks to these reasons, I was able to do better at school and take my education to the next level.

Category: Module 1 – Literacy Narrative (Page 1 of 11)

Literacy Narrative

Unit 1 Project

UNIT 1 LITERACY NARRATIVE: FINAL DRAFT

Education narrative- Final draft

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