Reflection On Personal Narrative

It's a Friday afternoon, I plan to go to Great Wolf Lodge in an hour with my church. I see one of my friends so he says to his mom “ Hey, that's my friend” I said “Crap” So I go inside to sign in to go and see my friends just sitting in a corner on a big sofa. We are listening to music and just talking then a green bus comes.

I have lived in only one location my entire life: Edwardsville, Illinois. A peripheral suburb of St. Louis, it stands as the rare oasis of people in a desert of corn, pinned in its own personal bubble. Due to this blend of time and isolation, I developed a natural familiarity with my hometown. But, throughout my childhood, I longed to break free from the confines of the bubble and venture outward. However, this changed last summer, as I walked through Richards Brickyard, our family heirloom, that my great-grandfather, Benjamin Richards, founded over 120 years ago. I felt these childlike sentiments slip away. The bubble that had surrounded me for so long began to vanish, and the picture that it had been obscuring was slowly revealed.

It is true in life that everything happens for a reason. It is also true to say that sometimes it is all about being in the right place, at the right time. There was never a more prominent example of this than a traumatic summers evening, only a few years ago.

Teaching in racially diverse classrooms often leaves educators feeling uncertain about how to proceed and how to respond to historically marginalized students. There is pressure to acknowledge and accept students of color with different perspectives, to diversify the syllabi, be more aware of classroom dynamics, and pay attention to how students of color experience the learning process.

That was a lot of money, and I didnt want to let Tony down so I got in the car and started to drive. As I drove the road was empty. I had confidence I was not going o get caught. It was a slightly wormer day out witch might have been because the sun was out. I had the windows down and was blaring music just trying to enjoy life when a cop pulls out behind me.

The most important game of the year was coming up and I was ready. Everything was going perfect for me, because I was the starting QB as a freshmen at Englert High School. We were playing Joston High School the number 1 team in the nation since 1960, it was going to be a tough game because they had the number 1 ranked defense, but we had the best offense. The day before the game was just a normal day I went to school and had football practice after school. A couple weeks ago one of the other teams that we had played earlier in the year wanted another game so we decided to play them. They had been the hardest team we had played all year, we had only beat them by a last efforts field goal it hardly went in as it bounced in off the crossbar.

I was ready. This was how we were going to start off the season. Everyone was ready, thinking this was it. We wanted to be the best team on the ice. The coaches came into the room saying, “Let’s go, boys. Let’s start the season off on fire . . . big win today!”

I wake up at 5:30, five days a week, and each time I try to cram in five extra minutes, I end up having a late start to my day.

I think about it for a moment. "Thanks for the offer babe, but I'd rather fly this one solo" I reply to him.

    It was six A.M. on a beautiful yet brisk Saturday morning and I was fast asleep. Suddenly I was ripped from my blissful dream world by the incessant blaring of my alarm. Groggy, I shut off the alarm and stumbled into the kitchen for breakfast. I had a light breakfast consisting of warm cinnamon toast and butter so as to not upset my stomach during the looming Cross Country race.

It was a hot sweltering Saturday in August, August twenty-seventh to be exact. I remember waking up that morning with my stomach in knots we were to play the Hot Springs Bison. Sure, I played JV last year and practiced all summer with the first team but now all the hot god awful gut ranching two a day practices were about to pay off.

I was not an intentionally bigoted twelve-year-old. I was raised in an affluent suburban community where the vast majority of people are white. The 100% white private nursery school which I attended was chosen by my parents largely due to its proximity to our home. My public elementary school was about 70% white as it was populated with students who resided nearby. Finally, the private middle school which I attended, located almost an hour from my home, provided me with exposure to the most diverse student body of my youth as it was comprised of about 65% Caucasian children. What each of these formative academic experiences shared in common was both that their student bodies were disproportionately Caucasian, as well as that their senior administrators

I wish I could tell you all of this in person but I know if I try I’ll probably get very nervous and forget some small details that I would really like to tell you, and those are probably the most important to me. I saw you for the first time on February 23 at the valentines party, and that was such a fortunate thing to go to because I was able to get free food, have a good time, see old friends I haven’t seen since last semester, but most importantly I was able to see you. I didn’t know who you were at the time, but I knew you were like a very sweet, funny, caring, smart, and very beautiful just from your appearance. I first noticed you when you sat across from me when we were playing charades, and that’s when I knew that I wanted to get to

It seemed as if we had only been at school for about an hour before it was time for

When I was younger, my uncles to joke about the fact that I was americanized; that I didn’t know how life really was back in the motherland. I would just laugh and tell them to leave me alone. Then, I saw what they meant when we went to Africa in 2009.