High School Reflection Essay

8th grade was great I wasn’t the youngest, I was in the oldest grade. At this point I had middle school perfectly handled. Going to high school and being a freshman is terrifying you're the smallest you don’t know what a seminar B is and when you go to it. I loved middle school. I love high school; the only reason that I love it is because I have middle school to reflect off of. I have those experiences to help me have more. I use middle school to reflect and learn from everything that I did. I’m doing well in high school so far only because I have I have past experiences so that I can make choices that best benefit me now. Arnold Spirit from The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian and the Narrator from “The Bass, The River and Sheila Mant” are reflective because they both took action while being unique making it much harder than necessary. At the end of it they learned a valuable lesson and made the best decision for themselves.

Have you ever just felt like high school was too easy? Well I have because I felt like the teachers just passed you on. They didn’t give me a challenge like I was supposed to have and from that being, now I have to prepare myself for the college life and teach myself the things I was supposed to be taught in high school. The school I came from didn’t have a math teacher or a history teacher all year so we just sat in the class rooms and played everyday all day and I still ended up passing and that school was Albany Early College. They told me that I would finish high school with an associate degree but all I got was a discombobulated school and an uncontrolled school. The next school I went to didn’t care either. They showed me that I can skip class everyday and still pass with an A average. Despite all the things I didn’t get taught in high school, I did learn some unique aspects that I can reflect on and use for college. The skills I reflect on are annotating, using the Cornell note-taking system, and how to be on time for school.

Upon completing my first semester of college, I would say that the moment I will most likely remember most is the preparation of my Portfolio for my Africana Studies 115 APPR University Writing class. While working on the assignment, reviewing and organizing each iteration along with the revisions to each and every exercise within the selected progression, I noticed the high level of critical thinking that I applied to my work throughout the semester. This level of critical thinking was something I could not see myself doing prior to my college experience. Another highlighted memory will be the fact that I developed a greater degree of camaraderie with my classmates. Usually, interactions with other individuals in a class, with whom I am not well acquainted, produced very poor results.

Inclusion: Means the action or state of including or of included within a group or structure. In education this means everyone has the same opportunity, there should be no boundaries to stop a learner reaching their full potential in the learning enviroment. (wikipedia)

The book describes students overcoming obstacles as, “overcoming obstacles and challenges, in solving problems, and in adapting to organizational change” (Whetten & Cameron p82). I learned the English language abstractly, which I overcame and I managed and organized my time for work, home, and school. When I come to U.S, I could not speak decent English. Also, I had a young child and I was a single mother. I could not take my child to a hospital without having a language translator. I was actually disappointed in myself for the way I needed support from the interpreter every time. I finished high school in my country of Somalia, and during that time I had learned limited English, but it was not sufficient enough for me to talk with others. After six months when I came to Boston and I started working. I used to try to learn excellent English all the time so I can communicate with others, but it was not easy to me. Learning English is tough when you have children and you are an adult. It was not easy going to school when you do not have money to pay for school. For that reason, I used to search for schools that taught adults English for free. It took me couple of years until I could sign up and study at a community college. I received support from my teachers and tutors so I can learn and understand the language. Today I overcome that obstacle and I’m pleased with my hard work and honesty in my life and in university.

When the school year first started, I thought English class in junior year would be easy based on my performance in sophomore Honors English. However, AP English Language and Analysis has proven to be a difficult and rigorous course. I had struggled both as a student and as a writer in the beginning of the year, but I had learned to recognize several chronic problems I had made in my writing. Through the past school year, my writing skills had matured as I strived to fix issues in my writing. The improvements in my writing skills can best be seen through the growing conciseness, fluency, and analytical thinking in my essays.

Mrs. Annette Hovey, a music teacher at New Rockford-Sheyenne Public School, was busy giving an elementary percussionist a private lesson as I waited outside the music room for them to finish. Mrs. Hovey can be described as a woman who simply loves and embodies music and is dedicated to teaching her students and helping them grow through her inspiring classes. She's slightly shorter than average height with shoulder-length brown hair, and that day was sporting a relaxed look of: blue jeans, turquoise Nikes, a NR-S homecoming t-shirt, and a comfortable looking black and white plaid zip up sweater.

I was born in central Los Angeles and remained there until if was five years old. Due to our growing family and some of the concerns surrounding community violence my parents decided to move to Van Nuys. Even within the San Fernando Valley there are areas of high community violence, gang activity and poverty. However, I felt as sense of community support and safety due largely in part to the *** established early on in my elementary school. Though community gatherings my mother found a new source of social support and support networking. The ability to learn about our neighbors and community helps to establish a sense of cohesion, trust and a real community. I remember my mother and neighbors coming together to talk about issues within the larger community that may have been or concern or placed children and families at risk. As I grew older things appeared to have changed. Families moved away, businesses closed down, and again it seems the once united community has reverted to an individualistic neighborhood.

I spent the first years of my life in Pensacola, Florida. I was raised by a single parent, my Mom, and learned a lot about independence and women’s rights. Pensacola is a Navy town and she worked at the base. She would invite Navy people to our home during the holidays which taught me a lot about diversity. I learned a lot about from the people that came to visit and we had good times. They were in all colors and from various parts of the country. By the time I was in school, I had no fear of people different than me because of my exposure at home. In high school desegregation and bussing was taking place. Tension was running high and fights were breaking out nearly daily. A mixed-race group of us met at a girl’s house with the idea that we had no significant or insolvable differences and that we needed to find a way to stop the violence. We had a productive meeting and found common ground. The meeting took hold and the word got around that things needed to calm down. We needed the police to leave campus and we needed to take care of our own problems. It was a valuable experience. After High School, I went to a 2-year college and got a degree in Law Enforcement. That didn’t take hold well as my experience with the local police department was not good. I found them to be junk yard thugs, violent, and sex offenders of sorts. It was also a time I discovered my true love: skydiving. A friend of mine talked me into making my first jump with him. I was always fascinated with the

Every person on this earth has a past that shapes them and makes them into a unique individual. I am a 19-year-old student who has a life that may seem to have little flaws from the view of an outsider, but in all honesty been a journey of difficult ups and downs. I have found that many of the readings we are required to do in university will not personally touch us or make us reflect deeply on our own lives. This certainly was not the cas e when I read the personal essay titled Ghosts and Voices: Writing from Obsession by Sarah Cisneros’, because I found that I connected on a deeply personal level to three principal aspects of this piece of writing. First of all, I was also ostracised as a younger child, but in a school setting not at home. In those difficult years when I felt like I had no one, I escaped into the worlds created in books and through trying to write my own stories. Secondly, like Cisneros’, I found myself deeply connecting with some of the books I was reading and in them found the girl that I wanted to become. Lastly, this entire piece was how Cisneros’ discovered her voice as a writer. She found that the best way was to write what you know best, basically using your own experiences to draw your readers/audience in, which is also something I am well versed in not only as a writer but also a performing musician. I truly connected with this piece by Cisneros and was able to find many key parallels between our personal lives that really struck a chord with me.

For the past three and a half years I have participated in the school band. In that time I’ve taken part in concert band, marching band, and jazz band. Setting up my schedule in sixth grade kicked off the adventure.

Doors, oceans, cities, all these different descriptions have been used by different people to describe their mind. However, my mind is a never-ending slide show, with me sitting down watching different slides constantly flash before me on the projector. Their random most of the time, but I can choose which slide goes up when I need it. However, there is one slide that sneakily gets into the projector, I don’t remember putting it there, but it always manages to get in. Whenever this slide appears, shackles come out of my chair and traps me, forces me to look at this memory. I remember it well, I was around 10 or 11, I was sitting in my room playing a board game by myself, see my sisters were always busy and I didn’t have friends to play with, so I always played by myself. Then while playing I start realizing that I'm alone, I cry while the light shines above as I play this board game by myself, with no one around, I was lonely.

As I read J. K. Rowling’s commencement speech for a graduating class of Harvard University, I found myself connecting with the text on a very personal level. As I reread the speech for tis assignment I was able to reconnect with the text and old memories came rising up to the surface of my mind. I connected with the following quote: “It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all- in which case, you fail by default.” Rowling’s statements regarding failure relate to the time when I failed my math class last year and how that experience changed my life.

Practicums are a time to put into practice what we as pre-service teachers have learnt in theory. This experience can be challenging and rewarding all at the same time as it makes a pre-service teacher face both their strengths and challenges as an individual and an educator. Lesson planning can be time-consuming during the hours when one is not teaching but makes the teaching time run more smoothly. There are standards that graduate teachers need to adhere to and relationships with mentors, children, families and colleagues to establish all in such a short time.

As I woke up this morning in the middle of my college career, I was faced with the simple choice of what to eat for breakfast. Seems like an easy enough task, but it took me fifteen minutes. At this same point in my life I am faced with the decision of quitting my job now or waiting until I start my new one in March. Not as easy of a task. The choices that I make can be right or wrong, but either way I will learn from them. If I make the right decision, good for me and my life can go on smoothly. If I make the wrong decision, then I will struggle to fix my mistake and learn from it in the process. People are faced with choices throughout life. Sometimes these choices can be as simple as left or right, while others are much more