Personal Narrative: A Class Divided

All my life, I was always told that I was so smart and advanced for my age. Everything came easy to me: math, writing, reading, sports, and even playing many instruments. All this came with little work. So I seldom ever had to study or practice for anything. This occurred all throughout elementary and middle school. I was even placed in honor classes, yet those classes still turned out to be quite easy for me. I had nothing less than an A, but that was all about to change once I got to high school.

For many years, there has been a great deal of controversies on whether standardized tests should be used for college admissions. Standardized testing started in America over 50 years ago and are today, more pressure-packed and ubiquitous than ever before. The first standardized test was developed in 1959 by Professor Everett Franklin Lindquist. Many admissions counselors depend on a student’s ACT and SAT scores a great deal when determining if they should accept the student or not. Though many feel that these tests are a good thing and should continue to be used, others disagree due to the numerous problems that have been discovered when reviewing students SAT and ACT scores. Many feel that the tests are unfair and this is why standardized

Previously, in Dr. Boyce’s literacy class, we rigorously studied and learned how to apply reading strategies to specific texts. Thus, the text ‘Stupid Lady From Denver’ by Chris Tovani (2004) struck me as especially familiar. Everything that was stated in the article brought back memory after memory of all the various reading strategies we covered last semester. Tovani (2004) states that “Good readers separate themselves from struggling readers when they recognize that they are confused and do something to repair meaning”, which rings especially true to my memory as well (p. 5). She encouraged us to seek out challenging portions of the text that confused us, use our marks to label what was unknown, and then use the strategies such as ReQuest,

Starting the age of 5, we come to school everyday to learn something and expand our horizons. We start with the basics, such as the ABC’s and our 123’s, until we work our way up to a more in depth discussion of each subject, such as English II. This semester, I have learned topics in the field of English II,such as grasping the underlying meaning a book presents, the 12 archetypes, even the subject of debate.

It was the last inning in our all-star game, and we were losing 10 to 8. Our team had 2 outs and we couldn’t get the third. Our pitcher was doing bad, throwing all balls, while all of us in the field were tired, ready to fall asleep at any moment. There goes another walk. They score again. Great! I was thinking. At this point in the game I thought for sure that I would die right there in center field. However, baseball is baseball and things can change rather rapidly.

CJ is making progress in all areas of tutoring: executive functioning, reading fluency, reading comprehension, and writing. Outstanding work, CJ! This term, CJ demonstrated a much improved effort in both transitioning and staying on task. While staying on task is sometimes challenging, CJ now understands that it is a skill that is required for academic success. CJ also made strong gains in reading this term; he is now reading and comprehending above grade level! To add, CJ continues to ‘devour’ books, and he is always eager to discuss what he is reading in the novel, The Lost Hero. To increase his reading fluency, CJ is learning to decode advanced sounds within multi-syllable words. During the writing component of tutoring, CJ demonstrates

I am Jimmy Nguyen, a graduate from the S.T.E.M(Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) program of L.V Berkner High School. Unlike the classmates in the class, I am the type of person that will work hard in order to achieve a goal that would eventually help me hit my milestone. My strengths are being able to work with classmates, fighting back procrastination, and hardworking. My weaknesses are time management, being organized, and prioritizing.

I don’t recall having a hard time learning how to read. It was one of those things that just came easily to me for some reason. For the most part I enjoyed reading as well. The only time I didn’t enjoy reading was when I didn’t understand a certain word or a certain phrase. One of the strongest memories I have from learning to read was when I was unable to pronounce the word “the”.

The Tide detergent bottle gradually moved back and forth, as my father’s elbow creaked, refusing to cooperate. “It’s my own way of physical therapy, you see,” my father boasted. “If I keep it up, I think I’ll be able to move my elbow by the end of the month.”

The history of my literacy has been a long road of a frustration and learned lessons. As a child, I was a bit of a loner so reading and writing were the closest thing to a social life for me. The things that I bottled up inside came out through my writing and it became somewhat of a pass time for me. As long I could remember literacy as has been an important value for me in my life because from very young age I got express my true self without being judged by the outside. Even though in my later years I would deal with some heartaches and set back that lead me to give up on my love for reading. I would always come back to my real first love.

As a College freshman in his second semester, I have learned to deal with the challenges that I have to deal with peaceful, yet exhilarating moment when my mind engages with an author’s thoughts on a page. As John Dewey states “Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself.” What Dewey insists is from my early days in high school to my first year in college as a freshman, I wanted to know the full concept of English; however, I have now realized this subject would fill in my void of English with noteworthy complexities. This was not the case for most of my second semester in Montgomery College; I always had trouble in various parts of the subject, such as development in thesis statement, sentence writing and reflecting on previous essays.

The first half of this semester was swift and I can’t believe how fast it passed by. College is a whole new world for me that I had never imagined with a lot of new experiences that I hope will shift me into a better and smarter person. There are more things I can do in college that I would have never dared to do in high school and I am happy for these new freedoms. I am able to eat in class, leave class without asking and they don’t care if I pay attention or not. My high school teachers would always tell me to wait for the bell, sometimes would not let me leave and if I did not pay attention they would yell. However, I still feel trapped due to the immense academic stress. Academic stress is the worst as it defeats the “freedom”

As a college freshmen, there is no doubt that I still have a long ways to go in order to achieve my academic goals. And through this journey, I know that I will encounter highs and lows just as I experienced in the past, most notability in high school. I keenly remember instances around this time where I doubted my abilities when subjects like math was proving to be difficult, even when I was trying to put in effort to stay on track. I was struggling in math because I did not try to identify my weaknesses, and never tried to come up with solutions to fix my problems. Rather, I chose to give up on math and settle with a grade barely passing. My misfortune in math later helped me realize that I needed to change my outlook on school. Instead of dismissing a subject just because I was not good at it, I would rather try and identify what I was doing wrong, and work to fix it. Taking the the ACT engage test helped me realize what my academic strengths and weaknesses are, and how I can use this knowledge to capitalize these strengths so I can be more successful in college than I was in highschool.

There is a slight difference between miscue analysis and retrospective miscue analysis. When a teacher conducts a miscue analysis with a student she listens to a student read and marks their miscues. After the reading has taken place and she has marked the miscues and jotted down any notes the student then retells the story to the teacher. In retrospective miscue analysis the student and teacher do the same thing as a miscue analysis but allows the student to discuss their miscues with the teacher after the reading. It allows the student to discuss and reflect on their own miscues with the teacher.

My fifth grade summer started with my mother volunteering me as a tutor twice a week throughout the summer. I visited my neighbor’s house to assist her in tutoring kids with math and reading. I of course protested, but my mom being my mom made me do it anyways. After my first week, I began focusing primarily on tutoring elementary aged kids. It took me a few sessions to acclimate to a teaching role rather than a student.