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Persuasive Essay : My Hometown

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It’s truly hard to complain about the area I grew up in. I was given every opportunity and every resource one could hope for: great teachers, an abundance of school funding, a college and career center, committed counselors, a caring administration, and every other tool that makes education accessible. Every kid came from a line of educated, hard working, and high achieving parents. But with all these benefits comes a darker side of affluence. My hometown is a place where college trajectories and academic achievement are not lauded, but expected. The only impressive institutions of higher education are decided by arbitrary lists and outdated reputations. Pressure to be a walking college application for dominant research universities …show more content…

My first grade teacher, Ms. Thrane, had placed me in the group of less advanced readers without any sort of assessment to test my skills. Every other child took the same general test in order to be properly assigned, but I was apparently exempt. Reading had always been my strong suit, and I was suddenly told that I was no good at the activity I considered my strength. I was heartbroken, and like the dramatic child I was, I stopped reading by myself. My parents probed me for weeks, trying to figure out what had happened. When I finally told them, they refused to let me stop reading while they looked into the incident. After some sleuthing, my mother found out that my teacher had assumed I wasn’t fluent in English because I was born in Jordan, a fact I was very enthusiastic to disclose on the first day of class. When my mother threatened to take the issue to the school board, Ms. Thrane finally let me take the placement exam, the results of which placed me in the correct group. The rest of elementary school as well as middle school generally came easily to me because I was always excited about learning. I felt powerful when I knew things, and it was school that gave me what felt like a superpower: knowledge. My transition to high school, however, was quite difficult. Suddenly, classes didn’t seem to focus on understanding material, but memorizing it. Every teacher taught to help students excel on

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