My Experience Of A Teacher

Let's be honest, I'm not the best writer. I have had to write paper after paper for about 12 weeks. Writing isn’t my strong suit and I don't think it will ever be a strong suit of mine. During the 12 weeks of composition class, I have seen improvement in my writing. Many people don’t like writing but writing skills are needed in life. I'm a junior in high school and if I want to get scholarships for college, I'm going to need to write essays. Whether I become a plumber or a CEO I need writing skills.

Completing freshman composition is one of the greatest accomplishments I have achieved throughout my high school career. I have experienced an immense amount of improvement on my writing as well as a huge deal of stress throughout the semester. In the past, writing was never one of my strong suits; however, I have learned quite a bit, for example, how to use semicolons, write with metacognition, and how to correctly do a works cited. During my time in this class, I have: reflected, set goals, learned the writing process, tracked my progress, and learned a huge deal about myself, life and college.

Although I have had many different types of teachers, there are two that stick out more than any others. The first was my third and sixth grade teacher. She was the best teacher I ever had. The second was my seventh grade teacher. She was the worst I think a student could have had. Both, these teachers had very different teaching styles and very different out looks on teaching. To be an effective teacher the teacher must respect the student and be willing to go the extra mile to help the students learn all they can. In this paper, I will discuss the effectiveness of these two teachers and how their teaching styles differed.

After a grueling first quarter, I was completely miserable, with terrible grades, low self-esteem, and no end in sight. I was hanging on to the hope that there would be some epiphany moment, a moment where suddenly my writing soared, along with my grades. That change did happen, but not all at once‒ it began during the third quarter, when my teacher, Ms. Boynton, asked me to stay after class, along with five other students. She asked if we would each be interested in participating in The Atlantic and College Board Essay Contest, in which we would each submit an analysis of a famous American speech. I was truly stunned that she had chosen me over so many other students in the class, since I had felt so lost for so many weeks, but it was exactly what I needed as motivation to keep on improving my writing. As I worked closely with her on my contest submission and other class work, I came to realize how much she cared about me and wanted to help me succeed. With that being said, she never made it easy; she continually pushed me, knowing that I could always do better if I set my mind to it. Last September, I began her demanding course with the intention of purely surviving, not necessarily thriving, but that

In high school I was not the best at writing. I did not find this out until I was places in advanced English. I was used to writing papers that had to be simple. So when I started receiving C’s and D’s I told myself something had to change. I finally realized that I could not write as well as most of my classmates. So, what I ended up doing was making my papers more complex and making my sentences stronger. When I applied myself I became a stronger writer. As I took the diagnostic test I saw I was making a lot of mistakes. At the end I made a 70. From this I could see why I encountered the bad experiences in high school and in college.

I was pushed constantly to work harder at my writing. I studied and practiced several new techniques and methods for prewriting and organizing the essays I found so hard to create. At first, I had quite a few bad days and quite a few subpar essays. My grades would vary greatly from paper to paper. This really scared me, as I hoped to keep myself from drastically dropping in my grades. Yet, I wanted to maintain my grade point average so I had no choice but to succeed and impress around every corner. I began to pour in, even more, work and apply all of the newly learned skills from that class into my mind. I hoped that soon I would be able to find a system for writing that helped me form proper

Throughout life, writing has been one of the major struggles I faced in order to succeed as well as others. Growing up, I would envy success from others, and I would wonder why I wasn’t better than them and why I couldn’t accomplish as much. Therefore knowing my weakness, I worked hard all of middle school to avoid the image that others placed me in, based on the fact that I didn’t do better than others. In high school I tried to avoid it, and it became easier to do as well, but as I arrived to college I wasn’t ready to all of the new expectations that surrounded me. Therefore, I have begun by taking classes that were the perquisites to help my writing improve. The first class I took was English 60B. That class wasn’t as difficult as I imagined and it taught the skills I would need for English 50. After I took English 50, I challenged myself by actually doing research and having to improve my organizational skills. Now being in English 1A, and although it is

The road to facing my worst fear has begun, Composition class. It has been such a long time since I have taken the last course in writing, as a matter of fact 7 years ago if I remember correctly. Spanish being my primary language and my professor, Mrs. White, from high school being quite strict made my writing experience that much more frightening. Even though it was quite frightening, I managed to get a B in that class hoping I would never have to face that mountain again and boy was I wrong! I believe my estimations of writing were consistent, I recently checked my score from my admission test and in my compass writing I scored a 6 and 4, which I believe is a good score.

One of the high points of the class was consistently making high A’s. We wrote a variety of different types of papers, and my grade was always respectable. Succeeding in this class made me feel adequately prepared to write proper papers. Although I made impressive grades for the class, I was able to do so with only minimal effort. Therefore, I knew I could execute my papers better. The quality of my writing seemed to stay stagnant over the course of the year. This class would have been exponentially more beneficial had it challenged me to improve my writing, however it never did.

When I entered more regular classes in my junior year of high school, particularly my expository writing class, I did not do well. I was accustomed to doing the bare minimum, putting very little effort in, as that was what was required to pass my special education classes. However, it soon became clear that my expository class would be challenging because my teacher expected great things from her students. Once I realized this, I threw myself into the work. I would go to class after school to ask questions about the content that was covered, as well as ask my parents for feedback on my papers. I passed the class with a C, rather than my usual A, but my writing skills increased exponentially. The C grade was obviously not what I had hoped for, but it meant more to me than my A’s. There were many times that I struggled with self-doubt, wondering if I had made a mistake in my request to

My philosophy of teaching is deeply rooted in nurturing the potential each and every student in my classes. Providing a creative environment that allows self assessment, growth, group interaction and mentorship are at its very core. Having taught in Higher Education for many years, and as an instructor of Media Arts and Animation, and Game Design, I have had the amazing opportunity to work with some of the brightest and creative young professionals. Teaching has not only broadened my love of art and exploration, but my determination to help students that do not have the confidence to persevere through their education, yet have the passion to follow their dreams.

“Okay students take your seats.” “Take out your homework while Miss. Cloud writes the lesson on the board.” “I can remember every day after school my sister and I would come home to play school with each other. I can’t remember a time in my life where I didn’t want to be a teacher; I have also grown up with lots of teachers in my family. Both my aunts on my mom’s side of the family are teachers. My aunt Tricia is a professor at Holy Family University. Although my aunt Tricia has six kids at home and loves kids she has always said she enjoys teaching older students rather than younger. That’s not the case for my Aunt Julie though. My aunt Julie is a teacher at a preschool. My aunt Julie always has the best stories to tell after she gets

“And remember class, your essays are due tomorrow,” the famous last thoughts of my dying hope for success. Ever since writing mo longer became about how well you understood and developed ideas, my progression towards a well published essay slowly rolled down the hill to failure. This could be caused by my lack of discipline, drive to perfection, or my sheer ability to misspell words like misguided, random, and unorganized (which, ironically, are all words that could be used to describe my writing skills). Despite my inhibitions about writing, I was still able to learn some valuable information about college level writing, and most importantly this class has allowed me to understand my own limitations when it comes to time management and the ability to process collegiate level work. At the start of this semester I was pretty confident about my writing skills. I did well on previous writing assignments in high-school so I blindly assumed it wouldn’t too difficult. I was wrong. I was definitely in over my head once I made to mistake of choosing an essay written by Stephen Hawking to analyze, argue, and persuade otherwise. This was not the brightest moment in my life, however, this did allow me to challenge myself. Since the beginning coming up with ideas and information was always something I was good at, so coming up with supportive evidence to use with my own conclusion wasn’t the hard part. In person would have been able to argue a valid point to the moon and back but

“A great pleasure in life is doing what people say you can’t do” These exact words come from my own perspective. These words mean something by stating that people have pleasure in doing something. This quote was burned into my mind so deep that I'll never forget the thought of this arrogant teacher. Devotion and talent had made a significant impact on overcoming this challenge.

During my years in elementary school, there was time where I was yanked from my other classmates for different types of ridiculous reading comprehension quizzes, passionate passages, and whimsical word recognition test in order to compare my results with those of my age. Those who would pull me out would stick me into a closet sized room and command me to wait for further instructions. To this very day, I can still see the tiny, cramped room with cluttered supply boxes and a dark turquoise, round, semi-circle table standing in the smack center of it. The room would contently smell of sharpened pencil graphite mixed with the stench of newly printed library books and paper cut stings. Although I was never one to read as a child, I have always enjoyed that aged, musty scent, heavily breathing in the intoxicating aroma for my own pleasure. Posters hung from the white, concrete walls with motivational quotes and phrases, such as the phrase “Carpe Diem,” one in which my six-year-old brain couldn’t comprehend at the time. Yet, they were so colorful and eye-catching that I would never actually read the posters themselves, just in awe and amazement. The room was that of a second home to me, a familiar place, once I was done with my tests. However, it was when someone entered that I dreaded ever being there in the first place.