My Educational Experience

As we pulled up to the massive elementary school building, I begged my mom to let me stay home from school, just once. As usual, she said no. Realizing my attempt to get out of school was futile, I shouldered my backpack, swung open the door, and trudged over to the front door. I would rather be anywhere else than here. For the majority of my life, I attended public schools. It wasn’t rare for me to fail a test or even a whole class. It was because of these failures that I would get even more demotivated and threw away the idea of working hard or completing quality work altogether.

The United States is continuing to grow in the number of families that are immigrating to our country. According to Washington State Institute for Public Policy (2007), “As of 2000, there were approximately 107,000 immigrant elementary students and 100,000 middle and high school students in Washington State, based on U.S. Census data.” Children from these families enter our educational system knowing very little English and they are considered to be an English Language Learner (ELL) defined by “those whose primary language is a language other than English and who have English language skill deficiencies that impair their learning in regular classrooms” (Malagon, McCold, Hernandez, 2011, p. IV). While parents truly believe their children will receive a better education in the United States as oppose to the country they came from, English Language Learner students face a number of everyday challenges while at school. These challenges go beyond learning the English language; they include the struggles that are faced not only academically, but socially as well. English Language Learner students face these day-to-day problems due to their inability to express their ideas and thoughts, along with not being able to communicate substantially and identify with the people in their community.

American society values higher education. College provides many opportunities for developing a variety of social networks, both formal and informal. Obtaining a college degree will be such a valuable and

In my early twenties, I knew that I wanted to pursue a career that would help others recognize their challenges. With social work I am able to empower and liberate people to enhance their well-being, therefore, I feel I can do this in a caring and supportive way. I am continuing my college education in social work so that I can help others succeed in life, and help those in need to overcome obstacles and challenges. My goal is to provide others with the essential tools to be successful in life and become more active members of society. My primary objective is to promote lifelong achievement and happiness by employing the knowledge and insight that I have gained through my personal experience and educational development.

As a student in high school, there were some minor challenges throughout high school. The first was managing the transition from the New York Public school to Newark Public School. Even so, I've experience bad times and I am living proof that everything always works out and perseverance is a learning lesson that challenges are always temporary. We as individuals have to be strong and patient to get through the storm. As a clinical psychologist, I want to help and guide people through the challenging times. I also love helping out those who are in need of getting the words they need to hear in their time of need. I’ve experienced bad times and I am living proof that, in the end everything is going to be alright. High school for me wasn’t the best with typical drama, broken friendships, broken hearts, and personal problems that have challenge me in great depths, but I believed in myself and learned how to cope with my issues and also help my friends.

“Accept the challenges so that you can feel the exhilaration of victory,” a quote by George S. Patton, quite accurately epitomizes the experience of my first year at university. After being offered the Rogers scholarship, I knew that I would have to work extremely hard to make the sponsors and the Canadian Lyford Cay Foundation proud. Knowing this, I accepted the task. With taking on this challenge came many difficulties, triumphs, personal highlights, and, eventually, goals for my second year.

My overall experience from Pre- K to high school was good. Although experience with school did not start off on a good foot. I hated school as a child. Anytime my mom would drop me off to school, I would cry for an hour. In fact, I did not stop crying when my mom would leave me at school until I reached the second grade. School always made me feel anxious, no matter how many friends I made nor how many teachers I liked. Although the anxiety has not gone away, I have learned how to deal with it.

Six years old, with my hair carefully braided into two bunches on both sides of my head, looking around at a school I’ve never been to before. It was my first day of school and I had no idea where my classroom was or who my teacher would be. Eventually I ended up where I was supposed to be and the first thing I noticed was a funky peanut shaped table located by a huge window towards the back of the classroom. My teacher's name was Mrs. Jones, a very tall woman with a love for flamingos. Her classroom was full of brightly colored posters with educational information displayed and several flamingoes hidden in plain sight. There were about twenty other children in the classroom, but I was too scared to go up to anyone. I stayed in the corner closest to the door, unable to make the first move, waiting for someone to notice me. Everything started out easy and one by one each student was taken to the peanut table. When it was my turn, I realized that we were being tested. Mrs. Jones kept on saying that my score didn’t matter and all she wanted was for me to do my best. The test contained several reading passages and after I was done I was asked to answer multiple choice questions about what I read. I answered the question the best I could and once I was done it was the next person's turn. At that time, I didn’t realize why we were being tested or what was the point of it. How was I supposed to know that this test would be used to separate our class into different groups of reading

It was a sunny summer day and football camp, was going to start. The week before I was preparing for it. I bought gloves and cleats. I love football, but I can’t play it because I am too short and I can’t catch. I knew in the next couple of weeks I would be at camp.

Throughout my life, I have grown up around individuals with exceptionalities. I was taught, judging other individuals is never the answer. Instead I had to learn to understand why others had different struggles growing up than me. I gained a good sense of understanding from my mom. My mother has worked in the healthcare field for the past 16 years. She has experience in managing and working in group home settings as well as assisted living programs. During this time, I have volunteered to help with various activities such as calling bingo, serving food and supplying entertainment for my mother’s residents. These experiences have helped mold me into the person I am today. Through these experiences, I gained the feeling of happiness by spending time with children and extraordinary people. More importantly, my past experiences have excited me to work in a classroom with children of different ages, backgrounds and exceptionalities.

When my mother was young and just starting in school she was told she would be nothing more than a house wife. All that I am, all of my personal and academic success all derives from this one incident. Imagine that, Imagen being young and having someone older and a respected member of the school system in your young eye tell you that you well never amount to anything more than a house wife. Why my mother was told this? The same reason I was told that it would be highly unlikely that I would ever read higher than a fifth grade reading level. My mother and I are dyslexic.

My educational past is complicated to say the least. Starting in the fourth grade, my mother pulled me out of traditional schooling to homeschool me, while she ran a home daycare; however, while the idea of being homeschool sounded great in the mind of a fourth grader my mind of a 20-year old knows this wasn’t the best idea for my educational experience. Until about the 8th grade my mother, an alcoholic, rather than teaching me used me to work in her daycare while she grew more and more incapable due to her growing addiction. Starting in the 8th grade I began to attend a co-op funded by the Tahoma school district, (Russell Ridge Center). Once I began making connections with both peers and teachers, I began to realize how much I had missed out on both social and educational standards that were met by a typical 8th grader. With the help of free tutoring from a select few teachers I confronted about wanting to gain academic knowledge, I slowly caught up to the standard educational goals, then pushed myself to succeed further. I became captain of our high school programs debate team, earned the lead role in three musicals, and became stage manager of our local high-schools theater stage. My Junior year, I began to attend Green River Community College as part of the Running Start program, earning a 3.5 GPA by the end of my first year. The next year I continued but ran into some obstacles. As time went on my mothers addiction grew ten-fold. It came to the point of physical abuse,

There are about 180 days of school in a year and this was the last one of my 7th grade year. I had just finished my 6th hour exam and I was instructed to help clean some of the basses. Once that was done it was almost time to leave. As time winded down, I stood anxiously at the door waiting for the bell to ring. When it rang, we all ran out of the school. Summer vacation had started. When I got home, I finished packing up my clothes because the next day, my dad and I were going to Colorado.

Ever since I was young, I have dreamed of going to college. Both my parents met at Indiana University Bloomington, so, they’ve always been extremely enthusiastic about the whole college experience. I am embarrassingly similar to my parents, and that, I believe, is the reason I have been looking forward to going to college so desperately. I knew it would be totally different from high school, but I think that’s the best part to me. I love new places and meeting new people.

It was a Thursday afternoon around six thirty. I was outside, at my school’s practice field, about to end marching band practice. We were outside packing up ready to go back inside and go home. All of a sudden everyone around me starts to freak out, while they are all looking up at the dark cloudy sky with their jaws dropped. The directors started yelling at us to rush in before our instruments got wet because we all knew what was about to go down just by looking at the sky.