In school I always felt uncomfortable and left out I never knew the reason why but with my classmates and teachers I felt out of place but I hope to be more social with my peers, also it’s like I would never love the spotlight and attention so most times when I was forced to read out loud a book to the class I would either read fast or just look around the room and think to myself of things that make me comfortable like my friends, Sports, and Family that’s just some of the things I think about when am in school. Outside of school is different I have more people speak to me like my Friends, family I like my Community where I live which is small but great everyone I know get along and we help each other out, I just feel more safer and comfortable around other outside of school because they create more of an environment I can express myself. My experiences inside of school does not effect me outside of school but in school I have a dislike towards reading and writing not because I don’t understand the work it’s my environment if am uncomfortable I tend to dislike the area. Writing was never my strong suit it’s hard for me to think of topics if am worry about what’s going on outside of school. The American education system is bad they treat us students like number or Dollar signs and Not as Students looking for help to better our life for the future I struggled with writing for awhile since middle school days I would have two teachers in my class and Still wouldn’t ask for help because I never Felt comfortable to ask for help So I Would do the Work by myself.

 

Literacy Narrative

   If I were asked to write about my experiences with writing and reading like I am being asked to right now, I would literally scream because none of these experiences were even in the slightness of good. It all started in 2nd grade, with my teacher Ms.Hinds. I should’ve guessed she would be a pain from her name. Basically, from the very beginning she would always call me out in front of the class just to tell me I’ve spelled several easy words wrong,  “Colour is spelled C-O-L-O-R not C-O-L-O-U-R”. Everyone would laugh and I was so embarrassed, I don’t like when the attention is on me. I feel awkward. There would also be instances where she would just pick on me to read knowing that I stutter a lot more than anyone. I felt different from everyone else and it seemed as if she was calling out my insecurities one by one in front of the world. I’m not sure if it’s just this experience but English never seemed to sit well with me from this day forward. If we could talk in numbers I would do that in a heartbeat.

               Maybe it has to do with the education system, I know all too many professors and teachers constantly using the lines, “I get paid whether you learn something or not” or “It’s your education not mine”. I don’t know about anyone else but this sounds like throughout the whole system there is no hope. How do you expect someone to overcome and succeed in an environment or system rather as this ? It’s basically saying if you fail you fail without too many people picking you up and showing you different. These phrases unintentionally call out the good and the bad as if it were segregation. No one ever gained anything from that except for more unnecessary problems, so why would you want to treat education that same way.

                 I have had some really bad experiences when  it came to English but the year after in third grade, my teacher made me look at it in a whole different light. Her name was Ms. Rodriguez and she was probably one of the most genuine and caring people you would have ever met. She taught me the art of “BS”.  She is one of those teachers the system needs more of, people who actually want to help and see you succeed. She taught me to talk to the paper as if your having a conversation with the paper, therefore your opinions are already developed and you don’t need to overthink because people are always trying to prove themselves right to each other so the brain is going to develop points for you naturally. It made me look at things from a whole new light and allowed me to develop a love for arguments and debates, she’s the reason I wanted to change my career path of a pediatrician to a defense attorney. She helped me to understand now before every other English teacher before put there two sense in and began to confuse me. You could become easily confused when you have so many different points of view and withe the education system its hard to know what’s really right, thats why so many answers could be considered correct and I don’t like that. That’s probably why I hate English so much there’s never a wrong answer. You could write so much to a point where you yourself could even become lost in what message you’re trying to get across. And as time goes on your own mind could be clouded by life making even “BS” to become hard to do sometimes. With math and science there is only one right answer to help decipher the unique world we live in., that’s why I will always choose them before I even think about English.

“Jack in the box”

Destiny Rodriguez 

Professor Jewell 

ENG 1101

9 September 2019

               I’m apart of a program called the Liberty Partnership Program, and what they do is prepare you for your future. In this program They’ve allowed me to see what my strong suits were and what I need to work on. At the time I was quite the shy type which by the way I still am. Even though I know how to read out loud or answer a question I choose not to simply because I don’t like to speak. There’s nothing wrong with me I just rather be quiet. Knowing that, they decided to have me go out of my comfort zone and read a mini speech, which wasn’t a problem except for the part where they had me reading this little passage constantly out loud to the top of my lungs . My god that was so annoying and awfully frustrating. It felt like no matter how loud I get it just doesn’t seem to be enough because I have to keep starting over again. It’s funny because I usually don’t sweat but that day my body was  reacting all types of ways. Some of which I didn’t even think I would ever feel. Like scared to get it wrong or shocked that I didn’t get it right after the second time or even maybe more so breathing heavy while reading again and again and again . It was just so stressful. There I was reading, which my voice was pretty vocal, clear enough for everyone to hear, well so I thought , and then poof an unusual comment had come my way. “Start over and project your voice louder”. In my head I’m like what is wrong with this lady I know she heard me. But it’s whatever I simply continued to read. After the second time again with the nonsense “read it again take your hands out of your pockets”. Now that was just ridiculous. Like seriously my hands in my pockets is why I need to read again? I was starting to get really pissed off . So for the rest of the time they had me rereading I had that look where it was like “yeah this lady is crazy” kind of look.she couldn’t be serious. That had to be one of the worst things I had to do when it came to reading. What kind of person would put a child through such anxiety and hardships? Shouldn’t that be illegal? That felt completely unfair to me. Having me read countless amount of times knowing how I am about speaking and knowing how uncomfortable that feels. Have you ever got that feeling where you had to read out loud and it feels like you were never going to stop reading, because it felt like you had endless words to spit out from that huge brain of ours. They really thought I was capable of completing that task? Yeah Ight. I doubted myself more believe it or not when I found of the little paragraph was a tongue twister. That was when I really lost it. The confidence started to fade , my projection vanished, and my will for reading was coming to an end . Which quite frankly I already knew I wouldn’t like to read off of my boredom but this just made my bad thoughts on it even worse. 

Literacy Narrative

Sehun Bolaji

Literacy in Writing

 

During my 11th grade year in highschool, my English teacher was trying to prepare us for the English regents. So she would have us all work on our vocabulary and sentence structure in class and have us do various amounts of essays to ensure ours success before the exam. I was pretty confident in myself due to the fact that I always had a 90 or above inEnglish tests during that time. She said to me the reason I had such a good grade on the essays is because she could hear my “voice” in my writing and that I use a lot of vocabulary words. But the day before the English exam however, she told the class that for the argumentative essay that we shouldn’t defend the side that we agree with the most, but defend the side that has the most backup information. This was not something I thought of before and it did sound like the logical thing to do so for the English exam I had started to do so, but because of this I had gotten a low grade on the ELA Regents. I didn’t fail the regents but I thought that the grade I got wasn’t good enough for me. So I was scheduled to take it the year after. During the gap in between I didn’t really study, all I did was do what I usually do, go to school and go home and watch anime and play video games and occasionally go out with friends. Then, when it was time for me to take the test again I came in with confidence, I was determined the write the way I see fit, which was basically the way people in the shows I watch speak because when I do that I use words I wouldn’t think of using before. Additionally it is more fun to me that way. Furthermore, I defended the side of the argumentative essay I agreed with, not the one with the most evidence. When the test grades came back I had gotten a 92 on the regents which made me feel better about myself, made me more confident in my writing abilities.

 

Due to that experience I went through I find myself able to connect with my writing. For instance, when I write you essays, they are always opinionated. This helps me able to gain a better understanding on what I am writing. Additionally, keeping it original. Furthermore, I never stress over an essay because of the confidence I have gained  in my writing abilities because of my personal experience. For example, the first time I took the ELA regents I was scared and nervous and didn’t believe in my writing abilities and had a low score of a 69, then when I retook the the essay the second time with confidence in myself I scored a 92. Due to this experience I see no reason to believe that confidence isn’t a huge factor for me when it comes to my writing. I had also gained a writing structure due to my English teachers lessons using the Schafer model. It helped me figure out ways to properly write an essay. I’ve been using Schafer Model to the point where I don’t realize I don’t even use it anymore. At this point in time I have realized that I use Schafer model and my own voice in writing in order to write my essays now. I had incorporated the words unfamiliar words from the shows I watch and the books I read into my essays which is how I came upon the writing style I have now. Since I noticed my writing got better in my opinion, I decided to write fictional stories in my free time when ever  I’m bored and read it to my friends and see what they think about it. I find it entertaining and my friends do too. Some of them even started doing the same. I had also began to like my English class more. The topics that we go over in class gives me some more ideas to put into my writing, let it be stories or just into my tone of writing in general. The only thing that I disagreed with my 11th grade English teacher in was that we should only defend the side with the most information when it comes to arguments. I disagree with the statement due to the fact that if I defend a side I actually agree on it’s easier for me to use my writing style and put my voice into my writing, easier for me to find a sort of flow in my essays. It’s also easier to argue against the side I don’t agree with. In my opinion, it’s better for me if the other side has more information backing up their statements than mine, it gives me more things to rebuttal, which is something I enjoy doing. When I rebuttal it gives me more things to write about, which helps when I have to write long essays.

Literacy Narrative

One particular event that comes to mind was freshman year of high-school, where the class was assigned to read the book “Merchant of Venice” by William Shakespeare. I remember being disappointed that I had to read yet another book for a class that never had me excited for what it had in store, but this was one of the few books I had actively read alone until I finished the book within the first few days of it being assigned. I didn’t even expect it from myself that I’d completely finish the book so quickly, but one page led to the next, and so on and so forth until I reached the back cover. I’m not exactly sure why I had been overcome with this sudden eager feeling to read but it was definitely a moment worth remembering as I wasn’t an avid reader beforehand.

My experience with reading was shaped heavily from the first time I read a book that I thoroughly enjoyed. It was the only book that I read on my own time and gave me a different outlook on reading, writing, and learning in general. I was not very into reading and it would clearly show as I was not very expressive in the way I wrote or even spoke.
I was not very aware of it until I found an old notebook I had with some assignments I did. I think it was 7th grade and my writing just didn’t make any sense. They was very short, simple sentences that had no expressive thought behind it. It was as if a child wrote it. From the point where I had my newfound like for reading, I realized that without reading or writing, I wouldn’t really be who I am today. I read lots of articles and newspapers of the most random things and it definitely changed my perspective on how things worked and developed a different way of looking at a matter.
To put it simply, I was very narrow minded. I always viewed school as this constricted area that was more or less used as a prison. I used to hate getting up in the morning (and I still do) just to go to school where I’m not allowed to do as I please. Learning was just not for me. This was all the years prior to my experience of actually enjoying a book. The years after, though, were much more bright. I vividly remember waking up and actually being somewhat elated to go to school.
This was of course a new and odd feeling as normally I would never in a million years be happy for something such as this. School was no longer this prison where I was forced to do everything and not question why, it was now a prison where I was forced to do everything, but learn something new while I did it. English especially was my favorite class to go to because being expressive was something I suddenly realized I enjoyed.

Now pretty much all of this change had occurred over a book I actually enjoyed. This brings my attention to the education system, and why it should be at least slightly altered to help students feel more compelled to read. Every year we always had to read some book that was assigned by the teacher and most of the time, none of the students enjoyed reading it. If the books were changed to a topic or genre in which the students enjoyed, maybe it would shine a light-bulb in them that would leave them wanting to read more.

Literacy Narrative

My experiences with reading, writing and speaking is what made English not my favorite subject. I’ve had a few experiences in which I thought the English language might not be as hard as I think it is but whenever my teacher would give us an assignment that most of the time required a lot of reading and writing it always reminded me how hard English really is to me. The fact that English is not my first language has always discouraged me to try and be perfect at it because I thought that no matter how hard I tried I’ll never be as good as my “American” classmates. I only started taking English in fourth grade and my teachers were never American so I never learned the language properly or the way I always wanted to. Until I went to high school here and all of a sudden I’m taking difficult english courses. I remember the first week of this English class my teacher gave out poems and stories to read and asked us to write analysis, write 4 page essays about what the author is trying to say, figure out the tone and asked us to figure out things I never even heard about and was never taught, she said that her course over the next couple of years should prepare us for the AP test and that if we do good in her class we would do great on the AP test .I panicked when I heard what she expected of us in her class and also thought ‘wow I’ll never do good on that AP test and will probably fail this class’. Because I found myself in a class where all of my other classmates were American or at least spoke the language since they were very young and understood everything she was talking about and all of them could write at least 2 page essays in one class and I was the only one who was seriously struggling. I also didn’t know anyone in my class to ask for help or relate to so that just added to my anxiety. After class I decided that I needed to speak to my teacher to explain to her my situation and ask her if I needed to be taking an easier English course because I genuinely thought I was going to fail,  but she reassured me and told me that she is willing to go over my essays with me and give me tips on how to improve my writing and that if I pay close attention to her in class I’d be fine. She suggested that I fit in the front too. She really helped me overcome a big struggle and she gave me hope that it’s not as impossible as I thought it was. After thinking that I would never pass the class I actually ended up passing her class and getting a really good score on the Ap test. 

English is still not my strong suit but the way I struggled with it taught me a lot. It taught me to believe in myself and that if I set my mind to something, it’s achievable. 

A lot of people don’t like change(and I’m one of them) but change is inevitable and change doesn’t always mean something bad or negative, you might think it is but either way you’ll always end up learning something from it.

 

writing bad

Kai Tyler

Professor Jewell

English 1101 TTH

9/15/19

Being raised by a Japanese mother who had been so adamant about me learning Japanese writing led me to not take much of an interest in the subject at first, Japanese or otherwise. I struggled Japanese writing, how could learning English writing be any better or easier? My mother only talks to me in Japanese, despite living in this country longer than she has in Japan. My father on the other hand isn’t really the talkative type. We rarely communicate and can manage to go weeks without saying more than 20 words despite living in the same home. One of my closest friends growing up was Japanese as well, born to two natives of the country. So from birth I was surrounded by a foreign language and culture, with little interference from my Father. 

Every Monday and Wednesday after school from the first to fifth grade was a 1 hr Japanese writing session, where I would practice writing and learning new characters (Kanji) to expand my vocabulary. From 6th to 8th grade I had tutoring 3 days a week to supplement my Mathematics, Science and Reading comp, never my English writing. Essay writing wasn’t a skill necessary for the SHSAT and that was my mother’s primary goal at the time. Neither of my parents were particularly strong at writing so it was deemed unnecessary at the time. I read a lot already so I feel like they thought that would somehow translate to writing. It didn’t. I didn’t ask for help because that would just subject me to potentially placing me in a Saturday school. My mother could help me solve quadratic equations or help me with two column proofs but she couldn’t confirm whether or not the paragraph I wrote had any spelling or grammatical mistakes. I was being unintentionally steered away from (English) Writing and to be completely honest I didn’t mind. I’ve never enjoyed writing, never thought I was good at it, and have basically tried to avoid it at all costs. I felt like I lucked out pretty hard going to Brooklyn Tech since it has a STEM based curriculum, a curriculum revolving around stuff I’d practiced all my life. Any papers I had to write weren’t exactly easy, but they were all expository essays. No emotions or opinions made it like all the other subjects which lessened the difficulty compared to, say, a narrative essay. I always did the bare minimum, doing however little I can to be done with it and do anything else.

Reading, however, I took to pretty young. So long as it was deemed educational, my mother would purchase it, no questions asked. I still remember the first book I chose to read on my own, rather than having it be a tutor or school requirement. ‘Eragon’ by Christoper Paolini was it. Quite a challenging book for a grade schooler. My main motivation for reading at it the start was that my mother used books or math questions as an incentive to play video games, every minute I read or question I solved was another minute on whatever console I felt like playing that day. ‘Eragon’ seemed easy as it was a big book with a dragon on the cover, and what kid doesn’t like a story about dragons? Unfortunately I didn’t realize what I was getting into and the vocabulary was far too difficult for me, stubbornly I pushed on. About halfway through the book I realized I was truly lost. An important character had died and I didn’t even notice. What else to do besides restart from the beginning? So I did, and I got lost again, this time 150 or so pages further than last time. With each reread I got further and faster and my vocabulary expanded, previous words that didn’t make sense I would learn through context. I felt a real sense of progression with reading, which pushed me to read more and devour whatever other fantasy novels I could find. I learned I loved lore and backstory, so whenever there was an accompanying novel or comic to a TV show or movie I enjoyed I would read it. Learn about everything they couldn’t include in the TV or Film medium, Harry Potter being a good example of this. I’ll always prefer to read and dislike writing due to my upbringing and don’t see that really changing ever.

 

 

To Write Is To Read

“Fight it… Focus… Wait, what?… I can’t do this…”, I told myself as I sat at my desk with my face against the table struggling to keep my eyes open. My boredom was taking control. I could not withstand the immense power of my boredom as I slipped into my subconscious… Zzzzzzzzzzz…

A few days later I had found myself in the same situation, fighting to stay in control, yet again… Zzzzzzzzzzz… This clash continued, recurring frequently and I soon realized this was not a battle, but a war, a war that I was losing, a war that could not be contained.

“I need to conquer this…”, I thought to myself. I needed answers. I started to explore my mind, going through all of my memories for something that could give me a clue. I had finally found something. There is a saying to “fight fire with fire”, I’ve always wondered what that had meant. How could I fight fire with fire, if the fire was what I was fighting? I continued to search through my immersive collection of memories until I had tried everything I could’ve possibly imagined. I was finally ready to give up, I had officially disliked writing.

Years later I had found myself being placed into the wrong English class; Creative Writing. Through my research, I had discovered that this class required A LOT of writing. I instantly repulsed this class. I had gone to every possible length to change my class, but in the end, I was given a sickening rejection. “This year is going to be HELL!!!”, I thought. There was no way out of this class, I just had to accept my fate and face it.

As the professor discussed what the class was all about I had quickly zoned out. Every class I would fight a familiar battle with my boredom, trying not to slip into my subconscious within the first 5 minutes of class. As swiftly as I had zoned out, I was given my first assignment, my first “creative” writing piece. I stared at the prompt for hours continuing to draw a blank. The prompt asked for nothing specific, which was the problem. After hours of silence, I decided to write down random things to complete the assignment.

With each assignment, we would read an anonymous student’s piece while providing peer critique followed by a class discussion. As I read the piece written by the anonymous student I started to realize that what I wrote was completely different than what they had written. Nothing was similar in any aspect except a small relation to the prompt. “Shit… I messed up…” I thought to myself. As the semester progressed and as we read more responses I started to realize how different each one was. Even in the class discussions, each sentence was interpreted differently from each student. I was simply intrigued.

Randomly while doing some cleaning, I started to look through some of the old English portfolios that I had strangely saved over the years. I began to read each one and I saw my progression as a writer of the years. There was a common theme of a “standardized” essay format throughout the portfolios. From one assignment to another, none of them spoke my voice. I started to wonder, “Did I ever have a voice to begin with?”

As we read more and more responses throughout the semester I started to pick up on the different tools and styles my classmates used in their writing. These tools and styles were used to make their voices in their responses. I tried to imitate some of the writing tools, styles, and tricks that my classmates used to discover my writing voice. The more I tried to imitate, the closer I felt to find my writing voice.

Even though finding my writing voice is something I’m still pursuing till this day, I’ve learned so much from this experience. Out of all my years in school, I was always taught to respond to the prompt in the “standard” format. To start with a thesis, to add fluent transitioning, to include shreds of evidence, to have a conclusion, and to be as clear and concise as possible. I always thought there was only one “correct” response. Since my realization, I have been more open-minded. Reading books to discover different voices authors use, and how they go about infusing it within their text. Writing as a way of expressing myself and publishing my ideas to the world. And learning through the different lens the world has to offer.

Blank Period

Jason Maselli                                                              9/16/19

 

These blank periods that continuously occur make me have negative feelings about writing because I know these blank periods will happen. Knowing the periods of nothing will occur makes me not want to write which only increase the possibility and duration of a blank period, and when they get longer it also increases the chance of my mind wandering so not only do I have to think of what I have to write, I also have to maintain my focus as well. These periods of time are really unpleasant since it is really just me sitting there staring at the screen or paper thinking of what I should write down and during this process I am only thinking of how to write the section I’m thinking about which is about three sentences or less. This is a problem since I don’t really think of what I’m writing about at length as in how to develop it further on in the paper. This makes the problem worse since I could be halfway through writing something and I cant build off of it in any way which means I would have to either start over or find something else that would tie into what I just wrote. This one thing that is very present when I write makes me not want to write since it’s hard to write something when you know it could take hours to just start writing something so it wouldn’t even matter if I do it earlier because thinking of what to write is still an issue. Now I’m not saying I dislike writing just for this reason because that’s not really the best reason not to like something. It just makes it harder to like writing or at least not be unhappy about it. I am aware writing is a process and that process is basically the same for what ever is being written and thinking of what to write is the first and hardest step no matter how many times you’ve wrote an essay. I remember I had to write this career essay during senior year of high school and it was basically give three reasons why you want to do this, evidence to support those reasons and a counter argument along with introduction and conclusion paragraphs. The typical essay set up right and the teacher had us do it in steps to make it easier which basically gave us a frame to fit everything or something close to that and honestly I think it took longer for me to do that then this. We still had to gather evidence, stats write sentences. All we had were the ideas we had to support but we still had to choose what we wanted to put down so it fits well in our essay and how to put it in and there was another blank period longer then what I had for this. It doesn’t matter if I start early or have a frame set they will still happen and continue to happen.