Personal Narrative: My Old School The Native American

Victor Villasenor was born on May 11th, 1940 in Carlsbad, California where his parents had settled down after immigrating from Mexico. He grew up on a ranch with his four siblings in Oceanside where they only spoke spanish until they went to school. Because Victor only spoke spanish he was bullied by teachers and students alike for his heritage and inability to do well in school. Being bullied and ridiculed when he was a child is why Villasenor was insecure about where he came from and who he was, and inevitably shaped him into who he was in and out of school. Villasenor did poorly in school because he had trouble with English and reading he primarily got all D’s and F’s, and had to retake third and fourth grade because he flunked, which resulted with him resorting to cheating the rest of his academic career.

I would notice my peers looking at me and treating me differently, usually from a distance because I was not of the same race as them. At a young age, I understood that children would sometimes bully each other once in awhile, but that did not happen to me. The act of bullying instead was in a more intense form of what we would call it discrimination, which is an act of unjust or unfair due to a difference of people (Replogle 2018). Where discrimination began to play in my everyday life in school for about three years. Everywhere I went, I encountered those who would called me names and tried to mimic my Asian eyes.

Every summer i’d take many courses to advance and exceed in my classes, my parents having some knowledge about high school believed at one point that I had taken a summer course to make up a failing class due to the fact of how my older brother struggled during his years. Not being able to do much during the summer also limited my time to having fun and doing what I liked. Community service hours were never mentioned to me until my sophomore year surprisingly and I had a plethora of hours piled up to my normal schedule, up until now I have been able to do most of those hours but if I were told sooner I’d be done by now.

While reading Freedom Summer I learned about a period in history that I did not learn about previously in other history classes. In my history classes my teachers mainly talked about Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks but they never really talked about the Little Rock Nine students who were always bulled and picked on when they went to an all white school. After reading about this it made me realize that students of African American descent still face discrimination when they are in school. African American students seem to get labeled as “bad kids” and they get suspended at different levels in comparison to white students. This is a form of discrimination because if a punishment is given then it should be equal, and a person who is of color should not face harder punishment in comparison to a person who is not of color if both of those people committed the same

Why Students Shouldn’t Have to Wear School Uniforms Regan Narine couldn't have been more eager to get through his first day of 3rd grade at Athlos Leadership Academy- “I was excited to meet my teacher, get new friends but instead I was sent home.” He and his little brother Rayshawn were pulled from class in the morning for not wearing the school logo on their shirts. US schools with a minority student population of 50% or more are four times as likely to require uniforms than schools with a minority population of 20%-49% and 24 times more likely than schools with minority populations of 5%-19% (US Department). Although school uniforms are thought to help students fit in, actually it denies their first amendment of the US Constitution stating

In my freshman year of high school I was the most awkward kid in every single photo I appeared in, my pose was inelegant and my expression was often fatigued. I did not live with courage. However, that’s not to say that I lived with cowardice. I more of lived with vagueness. I’ve always been an individual, but through much of my life it was not loud independence, it was quite quiet.

New school, making new friends, and getting used to the school. My sophomore year I transferred from Shaw High School. I really didn’t want to go here I would have preferred to stay at shaw, but I couldn’t. Sophomore was my worst year of high school. When I first started Collinwood High School, they didn’t have my transcript over from Shaw so for a month I had to take ninth grade classes.

As a young adult, one of the challenges I faced is bullying. I was bullied in my primary school years, first grade to third, while attending a local school in my home town in Ethiopia. I don’t have a lot of memories from that time frame but I do remember the hardship and constant feel of demotivation. However, I also remember the numerous time my teachers awarded me gift as I would place first in my class.

When I started it was out of peer pressure from friends in high school. My parents did not smoke. However, since I was predominant with my deviant peer group more hours a week then perhaps my family, I took on the acceptable behaviors of my peer group. The same could be said for corruptive attitudes and the connectivity of deviant behavior and how it is controlled by peer

As I have grown older into the young man I am today, I have had my fair share of criticism. I have had different individuals critique, judge, and sometimes dismantle me with their own opinions and negative feedback. Today I am now open to criticism and see it as an opportunity for improvement. At one point in my life, I was not always so optimistic.

It was because my knees refused to allow me to push myself to full speed. I have a disease in both knees called Osgood-Schlatters, it usually develops in young teenagers who are hitting puberty at a fast rate. Most of the time Osgood will go away on its own but mine has been with me since I was in the seventh grade

For some reason teachers and coaches were not always a fan of our jokes. As I write this, I realize my parents were probably not a big fan of them either because after 5th grade Erik went off to West Middle School (public school) and I unwillingly went off to a private middle school. From 6th

Tips for Incoming Freshmen in High School In middle school and all of my previous years I thought my freshman year of high school was going to be the toughest/worst year of my entire life. Movies and TV shows make it seem as if all that’s going to happen to you will be negative. So far, my freshman year hasn’t at all been a negative experience. I just had to tell myself that this was going to be like every other school year and to not dread it so much.

Growing up my parents instilled in me that I was beautiful and my skin was beautiful. It was clear to me that everyone else didn’t feel the same way. I went to a couple different schools throughout my life starting with a predominantly black school then a predominantly white school then a very diverse school and at each one I still experienced colorism. At the black school I was not liked because I was darkskin and my hair was kinky and I was just not as pretty as the light skinned girls.

I am white female and raised in the early 80’s, I went to Longwood High school and as most of us know it’s a very diverse school district. A lot of the teenager’s romantic relationship were interracial and it was pretty much expected. Other students wouldn’t think much of it because it was so common. The older generations (grandparent and parents) disliked the whole interracial couple thing because they are stuck in living the old school lifestyle which whites and blacks date/marry their own ethical race. For the most part our society is still stuck in this mind frame to this day.