Category: Unit 1

Can someone’s opportunities and life outcome be decided from birth? In my life, I was taught a variety of things I had to look forward to because of my gender and race, and most of those things being negative. One of those things I was taught was that for me to be something I couldn’t be “a stigma” and for me to be something I had to get an education, but I was also taught that most of my teachers wouldn’t care and they were only teaching to get paid, which then gave me a lone ranger perspective that was negative and flawed. As time went on teachers showed me that may very well be the case but there were periods in my learning experiences that I was shown just how much a teacher can care.

My first instance of when a teacher showed me I wasn’t in this alone was in 6th grade. I was new to middle school and I had an idea that everything was fast-paced and there would be little to no help, that was until I met my English teacher. My teacher was the type of teacher that you wanted to know because she was a great teacher but also a real teacher. She didn’t pull any punches when editing your paper and she was never afraid to tell you, “this sounds dumb.” But what really made her most memorable is the fact that she acknowledged and introduced us all to the fact that, we were born with odds stacked against us, and as young black learners we were not expected to be much. But she made it very clear to us that no matter what others may expect of you, you have to reach your own heights and defy the normalcies. It was her words and her level of care that set her apart from the other teachers and it let me see that from a young age there is help in education but also if you don’t want what’s best for yourself then you can’t expect to reach new heights.

I have never been good at ela even since a kid not only was my handwriteing bad but my speaking was bad too in most of my schools I to take occupational therapy for my speech issues. but still every aspic of ela is a still an issue from spelling to grammar no matter how much I write I still cant get better in my problems. the only I really enjoyed about ela was the reading when we did not have to write about I loved reading which is weird because i would do poor in ela but to great in history. i have also gotten better a speaking because of ela but since i mosty keep to myself it really doesn’t matter to me. i do wish to become better at ela but in my mind ela takes a lot of planing whish I’m not very good. for essay i know what goes into but when i put it to motion i always get stuck at the the beginning or end. then i don’t like how it looks or read and i rewrite it again.  ela is like a clyce for me that i can never get out of

I’ve struggled with English since elementary school and it was never my favorite subject because of how poor I was in the class. My teachers noticed I was way behind grade level when it came to writing and reading and tried their hardest to get me to practice at home but never bothered doing so because I had no faith in my writing/reading. I finally became more comfortable with my writing during my last year of high school in AP Literature. I’m still not perfect but my teacher taught me a lot about English. The most important thing I learned from his class was confidence! Being confident when speaking and writing is super important in English because it helps you move forward and help improve your understanding. During huge assignments, I was always stuck on what to write and was afraid I might say something wrong. Due to my lack of confidence, I would always leave my assignments blank which lead me to falling the class poorly and gaining nothing. Once I developed the confidence to begin participating and completing assignments, I and my teacher noticed progress. Overall, confidence is key in English because it pushes more broad ideas which are essential to us when we are reading and writing.