I learned a lesson all the way back in first grade, and that lesson has stuck with me ever since. I was coming in from recess, and I was talking to a friend of mine off to my left. Unfortunately, I was not watching where I was going. I kept barely taking glances of what was in front of me, and that was a huge mistake. Someone was running behind me, and wasn’t watching where they were going either. As I approached the building I heard yelling, but thought nothing of it. After all, recess had just finished, so obviously kids would be yelling, right? It turns out some kids had been playing tag, and decided to play until they got inside. One that was still running away, because God forbid he’d be “it,” was Nick.…
Growing up can be challenging even with the ideal surroundings. Your teen years are even more puzzling because you seem to be stuck in between being a child and an adult. Throw in not having a father or mother around and life gets difficult. The year 2001 was a difficult year for my family and the nation. My life growing up wasn’t picture perfect, but in one very long month I learned that kindness from those around will help you endure and survive.…
Yough Intermediate Middle School, a comical and controlled environment. Waking up everyday to come to school is a nuisance. It worth every second of the day because of the amazing teachers, students, and staff. The curricular activities are as creative as a Picasso painting. The adventures I have gone on in Yough has taken me through life even more. The adventures have been vigorous, inferior, and patchy.…
In fourth grade, I was given a homework assignment of the worst nature my nine-year-old brain could envision: an essay. My entire class erupted with sighs and groans as my teacher explained the assignment: interview someone you know and write a biography. I was stumped; I didn't think anyone in my family was interesting. I didn’t have an uncle that was a firefighter or cousin that was an astronaut. I had absolutely no idea who to write about. At dinner that night, my parents suggested I interview my grandfather. With no alternatives in mind, I unenthusiastically accepted their suggestion. The following Friday night, my parents drove me to my grandparents’ house with a pencil and a notebook, and I sat down with my grandfather as he told me the story of how he came to America.…
I once had a crazy college professor who made us write a paper and put music to it. I wrote about how my wife was like my new kitchen trash can and played chords on my piano to enhance the words I spoke. My teacher liked it. I liked doing it. And, I think my wife still likes me after doing it too. The assignment, in both the way it was given and how I went about doing it, reflects two ways that embody my personal educational philosophy.…
My metamorphosis came about when I entered high school. My English teacher assigned a project in which we began mapping out our high school experiences so that they attract the attention of our desired colleges. After class, I opened up to her about how I did not have any direction in life. I had no clue what I wished to be or even why I was going to school. To my surprise, she didn’t ridicule me. She simply asked me to recall a time that inspired me when I was a child. It could be anything from a superhero movie to the first time I learned about the planetary system. Out of habit, I claimed that I was never inspired by anything. She then retorted that if that were the truth, why was I still being driven to exist. Without purpose, creatures lose the will to carry on so something had to have incited my passion to keep me active for all these years. To this day I am amazed by how a simple phrase could move…
I’ve always had lofty, perhaps unrealistic. In middle school, I naively assumed that I would be in top 12% of my class, by simply making A’s. I tried my hardest in every classes, but still wasn’t enough. I never reached my goal of being in top 12%, as a result my self-esteem plummeted. I started high school with high hopes once again. Perhaps even more naively, I pursued the goal of being ranked number one. I was too young to realize the concept of “realistic” goals. My biggest obstacle was my state of mind. I brought my self-down. I told myself the only way to be the best is to be better than everyone else. Setting such a high goal did help me in the end. After the second semester of freshman year, I received my rank. I was ranked number 10;…
Before this year I was always dead set on being a high school history teacher and thought that I never wanted to teach anything else. During the fall semester I was placed in a sixth grade class for my observation hours and at first I was kind of upset about it. Once I experience a middle school classroom I was still on the fence about what grades I wanted to teach, but I figured I would take this course anyway. I am so happy I did because I decided I want to do my student teaching in middle school. I have realized this is such a unique time in children’s lives and I want more of the molding aspect rather than solely teaching like at the high school level. I want to not only educate students in history, but also have it relate to their every…
My educational goals can be said to be broken down into three parts that are really the means to my ends which is the fourth and most important goal. First, Im working on getting good grades in every class, I want to work on having and maintaining a high competitive GPA. My second goal is to get my Bachelors in Political Science in an ideal time frame of two more years. My third goal and one that is out of my hands, one may say, is getting a scholarship. I know there is a large amount of competitive students in the school, who are well deserving of scholarships but I need this scholarship to alleviate my parents from their stress and hard work to keep up with my payments. The last and really my main goal, where my eyes are set and where I,…
Growing up, I was unalike from other kids, I was "imaginative". During class, I would always by myself, writing bizarre stories with preposterous characters and with an unpredictable plot, while the other kids were playing with their friends. Many of my classmates would be entertained by loony stories, while other kids thought that I was just some lonely nitwit writing absurd stories to make up for not having any friends. In that year I was relocated to a different school, which I didn't want to go because I didn't have any friends at the school, I was currently attending and it would be much more difficult to make new friends. In the following year, I was still that shy girl in the back of the classroom not interacting with anybody, but it…
Growing up, most of the children I knew would go to church on Sunday’s, visit their grandparents’ house to bake cookies after school, and have milk and cereal for breakfast every morning. But I had never set foot inside of a religious building, couldn’t even speak the same language as my grandmothers, and ate congee with fermented soy beans like it was the most natural thing in the world. My little town where I’d grown up, made friends, and built memories was, to say the least, completely un-diverse.…
(More dramatic beginning) Choking and laughing through the cigarette smoke as I sit around the smoking area listening to the seniors tell their crazy drunken stories and cat call at the numerous ladies. This is the dream for any freshmen, but not what I expected when I was thrust into Younglife weekend camp January of my freshmen year.…
Growing up for me you think would be fun for me and happy because i'm the only child . No we had our ups and down just like any other family. I was born in Brooklyn and stayed there until i was about 6 months and then move back to Chicago stayed there until i was like about 5 maybe. Before that i remember where we had to travel with my dad places because he was a truck driver. Slept in back of the truck i guess you can say we struggle . Living in Chicago we was living with family members and trying to survive . My parents tried to make the best for me did everything they could for me having jobs to support like they do know that i'm 18 in high school. They always told me to be better them an accomplish things. I'm going to learn from that…
I was the kind of guy who always strove in order to get the highest grades but yet hadn’t decided what to do in the future. I wasn’t worried, I knew someday I would find something in what I was good at. I got to live with that thought for some time until I got to attend middle school, where I stopped worrying about my grades and managed only to pass the subjects. I spent most of my time sleeping due to the frustration of not knowing what to do in the future. Most of my middle school experience was tasteless. I hadn’t friends at all, and teachers used to discourage their students about their future. “You're not going to college, you’ll not be able to do it because you’re poor” used to say, Mrs. Vazquez, the math teacher who instead of giving her class, talked on how much his son had accomplished in college and how we would not be able to attend. That was about to change.…
Growing up I spent most of my childhood in Vietnam living an ordinary life. My parents were not risk-takers until they decided to quit their career as educators and move to the United States. Knowing that life in America will be challenging for immigrants, we mentally prepared ourselves to be fearless and get through every obstacle that is in our way. No matter how prepare we were, being a newcomer was frightful. When I first step foot on the land of promise, there was a mixed emotion suddenly rushed through me as a signal telling me life here will not be easy. We faced will endless obstacles and the language barrier is the most, the biggest challenge for us. Personally, I think learning a new language is difficult and requires a lot of hard…
