Reflection Paper

Although society encourages all of us to embrace diversity, it was hard to do so when I first moved to South Dakota. As my picture shows, I was one of the very few Asians at my school, and it was not easy trying to simply blend in. Humans may collectively condemn judgments based on skin color, but it really is inevitable for visual creatures like ourselves. Though my white classmates did not show their sentiments outright, they regarded me as an outsider. They were not familiar with the Asian culture or people, so they took the convenient route to figure out my identity – stereotyping. I was expected to excel at math, be buried in textbooks and SAT study guides all day, and act awkwardly among my peers. Whenever I did not fit the Asian “mold,” they were genuinely surprised and even threatened. I wanted my identity to be judged upon my individuality, accomplishments, and characteristics. Instead, my Asian heritage consumed the entirety of my identity. I was not “Doha Kang” in their eyes. I was “that one Asian kid.”

As I was first raised as a child, the biggest influential individual in my life is my mother. Nonetheless, she comes from a background from how her parents raised her to treat others in the same manner as you would like to be treated. With this standard, this has been the “golden rule” throughout our family today. By belonging to a Catholic Church since I moved back to the state of Pennsylvania before entering the start of 2nd grade, I attended St.Ignatius of Antioch in Yardley, Pennsylvania.

Since I took U.S history and AP Government in high school, I was not completely blind to issues regarding the government prior to taking this course. I knew how the government worked in terms of the separations of powers, the bureaucracy, civil liberties and civil rights, and the different branches of it. Therefore, I did understand the function and the purpose of the government, however, I did not understand them all too well to believe that my trust in the government was high. I see the bad in the good, and the good in the bad, therefore, I was skeptical of the government when it came to certain issues. Furthermore, I like to see all sides of an issue before I take a sand on it, this causes me to be confused as to where I stand in regards to my political thoughts and attitudes. Overall, however, I consider myself to be very liberal when it comes to politics and policy making, especially in regard to women’s rights, immigration, education, global warming and the environment, as well as health care. However, I am still confused of where I stand on certain issues, especially regarding issues such as affirmative action. In essence, I am still figuring out what my political thoughts and attitudes are, but the beliefs I currently have are highly due to my political socialization and hopefully with the information I learned in this course I can continue to better understand certain issues and how I identify with them.

I stood idle in the waits of a euphoric, broad expanse dressed with the essence of an untainted existence--complete and absolute oxygen coherently ushered by hue-rich grasses. The trees animatedly breathed life, seeming to impart and transmit vibrant frequencies of information. As well, the sun did prove its enlightening, divine omnipresence whilst repairing my DNA. Knowing without experience, seeing without sight, feeling without nerval stimulation. I angled my head up complacently, I knew that I was in total control. Mantras and meditations, “This is perfection, this is eternal, this is my universe. I am God.” Then, I opened my eyes. I opened my eyes to a sudden but weighted sense of guilt. I felt like I was cemented to my bed. I felt more disappointed than shocked by this agitating yet alarming feel of harassment. I’d grown way too familiar to the weird, inscrutable sensation that I address to as, the agent of mortal life. Almost chronologically, I was then brought to the thought of the cessation of life. Prescribed to be just another Earth indigenous anomalistic hominid. Maybe, that candid frame of thinking was the reason I endured such a continual wrapping loop of moral destruction. I understood that the very things I saw on the day-to-day basis persists to be reality and I was also aware that we were born behind the eight ball. But, at 14 years old, the simple concept of managing priorities was hard to grasp. To aid the practical nature of self-reflection, I asked

Growing up as an African-American male, conceptualizing how I am perceived and who I wanted to be was a daily burden. Always being told to stand, look, speak and act in a specific way in order to not be viewed as a threat and to be successful rang in my ears each day I woke up until it became apart of my life. Being that I was raised on the south-side of Richmond, I was brought up around my fellow black children, however, I was sheltered away from understanding how they lived their life in order to keep me veering towards this clear-cut and defined persona.

I was 21 years old when I came to the United States and needed to work in order to help my father and relatives with the rent. Three months later, I found my first full-time job making pillow cases and mattress covers at the Navy Yard in Brooklyn, and attending evening ESL classes in a public school twice a week. Additionally, on Sundays, I went to the American Language Community Center (ALCC) in Queens. Since I came from the Dominican Republic, I was on a hiatus from college. Nevertheless, I knew that learning English was the only way back to it. Despite suffering from sleep deprivation during that time, I persevered until the day I received my admission letter.

Graduating from a school with less than 500 total students in grades Pre-k through 12, my class consisted of 19 students. Due to the modest size, most student athletes participated in multiple sports. In fact, I was on the basketball, baseball and track team going into my senior year.

The United States has always been known as a melting pot; a country where different ethnicities, cultures, and religions could congregate to in order to escape from conformity. A country where people could go in order to start a family and raise their children in a diverse environment. A place where everyone from different backgrounds is represented and everybody can share their ideals and experiences and feel welcomed. That is what I was told growing up, that is what teachers and mentors engraved into my brain, and it wasn’t until I was seventeen-years-old when I realized that is far from the truth. My language and perspectives are constricted due to the fact I grew up in the United States, and all it took was one trip overseas for me to discover the diversity of the world in comparison to America.

From the first day I could walk my mom started to develop my athletic abilities and attitude. She would play catch with me, kick around a soccer ball, and teach me how to dribble, all at home in her free time. I was exposed to sports quite often because her, my dad, and their friends, played coed volleyball and softball. I additionally have multiple older cousins who she would take me to watch play in high school games. Here I saw not only how the games were played; as well as what a team player and how the correct attitude appears out there on the floor. As soon as I was old enough, she signed me up for recreational sports in a neighboring town. Most of the time those teams end up with coaches who don’t know what they’re doing and my mom was not okay with that. She decided to take it in to her own initiative and coach my team that way she knew I would actually be learning the sports the correct way and making improvements. She coached me in flag football, soccer, basketball, volleyball, and softball. Quite often one of my friend’s parents would help her coach. My mom led some severely successful teams in my childhood. Especially in softball where we won multiple trophies. Sometimes I would become frustrated because it seemed as if she expected more out of me than the other players and I was always getting yelled at; although, now looking back I’m thankful for all the yelling and correcting me that she did because it pushed me to be a better player.

As humans of society, we all crave the respect and friendships of our colleagues. Unfortunately, choosing to walk in my Christian faith made those two components difficult to grasp.

I met with K. Beam before we left on our two- week fall break to discuss working with her for the coaching practicum and what she was interested in working on with her students.

“Because transition is a process by which people unplug into a new world, we can say that transition starts with an ending and finishes with a beginning.” In many ways the previous quote relations to my transition of transferring from Saint Peter’s University to UNC Charlotte. I had to “unplug” from many things in both my academic and personal life, as a result of, transferring to another school.

On my last day with class 3-213, I had the opportunity to conduct an interdisciplinary lesson using nonfiction articles. The articles I used derived from Nonfiction News: African Animal Edition by Cecelia Margo. Accordingly, the students have been studying nonfiction for several weeks and because of this, they had previously learned the various features of this genre. Upon planning for this lesson, I took time to prepare and craft an activity that would promote collaboration and engagement. Thoughtfully, I took into consideration the children that were in the room and adapted my lesson to meet their educational needs. Thus, I decided that I was going to crafted this lesson on the premises of two ideas: (1) tiered-text differentiation and (2) the pairing of advanced and struggling learners. Going into this lesson, I knew that I wanted to ask thoughtful and encouraging questions that would enable students to integrate their prior knowledge and challenge them.

There are so many things I can say about this class and why I enjoyed taking it very much. I would like to talk about how my experience in this class made me relate to history but I can only say so much in this paper, but here I will name a few. First thing I would like to say that I enjoyed our group presentations very much, from all of the groups. Second I would like to say that my favorite topic in this class was about WW2 and the battles and the history why exactly this war had started in the first place and how it ended. Also I want to talk about how the war opened windows of opportunity for women.

During my first year of highschool, I was held to a higher standard, than my previous years at middle school. A lot of the teachers at my school were preparing us for a college level experience. One teacher, especially, was pretty hard on us and she was the English teacher. The first major paper that was assigned was a research paper that had to discuss a historical event and how that event impacted the world. Since this was my first major paper and I was used to this kind of writing, I ended up writing specifically about Alexander the Great and the wars that he fought in. I specifically detailed the battles and what was going on, but I did not talk about how it impacted the world. My teacher offered to proof read the papers two days before the deadline so we could fix any critical errors. I showed her my paper and she said that if I turned that paper in, I would receive an F on the paper. I always strive to get good grades and to pass with all A’s, so when my teacher said this, I immediately realized how important writing could be and I started to develop my writing skills. All of the factors that were in this situation, made it a rhetorical situation.