“Creation”

Twelfth grade created the gateway back to writing and nourished that seed to help me choose to be an English teacher. I had been overwhelmed with a deep depression that kept me from allowing anything out and only letting the negative in. School became a secondary thing. Mr. Martin, my English teacher that year, brought me out of my depression, and he did it in such a way that showed me what a tool for students writing can become. The act of writing didn’t free my mind in a way it had done in the fourth grade, this was much more serious than someone spilling strawberry preserves all over my white shirt. I didn’t automatically pull myself away from the contemplation of suicide just because I could use writing as a means to let others know what was really happening upstairs. But the thought that I maybe wasn’t so bad at one thing helped me to realize that I wasn’t bad at a lot of things. With the addition of literature, Mr. Martin showed me that writing was much more than something write papers in, and even papers, with the right application, could be creative and witty. To have someone care about me and about what I had to say even if I was wrong helped that looming dark cloud look a little less ominous. He allowed us to choose topics we cared about to write papers on and somehow still managed to check all the state standards. He had a report with his students through writing. He helped me learn the grammar I needed in the fourth grade. He had such an impact on my writing and on my confidence in writing, that I am becoming a teacher in English so that I can help a student like me through writing. Writing was once again something more like an art than something I was forced to do for homework or for an assignment. It opened up to me the challenge of writing something I am proud of and yet meets the requirements of the assignment. It has allowed me to branch out and become more outgoing in my writing, trying things that I wouldn’t have considered in any of my previous schooling.  

“Clouded Judgement”

I had made it all the way to eighth grade and now had become advanced enough to be in advanced writing and reading class, or what my middle school called AIM. I was no longer riding the border between making to the next grade or not and yet I still struggled with writing.  Again the haunting feeling of the grammar of it all haunted me and made me question my creative choices. The standards pushed their way into my brain and caused me to get my first “D” on a paper. The teacher at the time marked up my paper with red ink that told me what a failure I was at the application of writing but “that I had good ideas”. I remember thinking that I would never be a teacher because I couldn’t manage the nitty-gritty of writing, despite my love for showing all the thoughts in my head. Rather than working with me to mesh my out of the box thinking with the technical junk, my teacher chose to mark up my paper with a big red “D” and leave me to believe I was once again on the road to failure. It made me question whether or not I could continue to pursue writing and literacy. I fell behind again and curled back up into my shell finishing the semester with a “C” in the class. I was again back to the “below level”. I hated the thought of writing and wanted nothing to do with it. I set my sites on maybe taking a basic office job where I would continuously be told what exactly they wanted me to write. This moment sticks with me in what I should not do as a writer hoping to ignite writing in others. While yes the tools of spelling and grammar are important, we have computers that aid in that. What computers can’t assist in is the original thinking of students, of fresh writers. Years later I can see the mindset the teacher was in, but I also know it almost sent me down the wrong path. It almost made me set down the pen and abolish writing from my life, which I think is what happens to most students in education. The push of writing standards clouds the knowledge and application of writers, like myself.

“Black and White Moments”

I was in fourth grade even the thought of writing made me break into a cold sweat, the rules of grammar taunting me through my TCAP scores. It showed through the scores on my state tests that I was not a good writer if anything I was far from it. Up until this point I was placed in the lowest reading groups, the writing groups that needed that extra “umph” from the teacher in order to get by and be another teachers problem. Even my mother as my teacher couldn’t make a difference in my writing because I had no want to get better. Everyone told me that I was a below proficient writer and because I had no understanding of the relevance of that I had no desire to want to change it. It all changed when I took a Writer’s Workshop from my fourth-grade teacher Mrs. Dodds. We met only once a week and she always had food for us, I swear as an incentive to make us come. In that hour or so that we met she challenged my whole outlook on writing, it no longer was a chore or a way to devalue me, it became an outlet to work out all the anxieties my little mind had. My favorite activity, though, was these black and white photos she had. Pictures that resembled those in The Widow’s Broom. We had ten minutes to write about what happened before or after or even during the picture, and I ate it up. There were no guidelines on how many words we had to write, or what even it had to be about, all that mattered is that we captured the brief moment of the photo. It made me realize that writing doesn’t have to be solely about getting proficient on a test. It let me look at writing through a new lens, one where I wasn’t being judged on the black and white, the gramatics, of it. Rather I was allowed to open up my own thinking and place that on paper. I was able to share my thoughts in a whole new media, and it turned out I wasn’t half bad at writing. I think without that workshop and Mrs. Dodds, I would have never learned to love writing. I would have always been stuck in the box that the technical things placed me. By doing so it opened up the love of reading, of enjoying other people’s works, creative ideas. It truly planted the seed that grew into me being a hopeful English teacher.    

“Dear Sonia”

Since growing up in a family of teachers, my mother and sister are teachers, I have known that this is something I enjoy doing since probably the age of twelve. For forever I believed that I was going to be the “black sheep” and do something “way cooler” but the more I tried to push it away the more I say the problems in education I needed to fix. By the time I was in high school I had adapted enough reasoning that I was going to be the person to fix it. I believe that we need a new generation of thinkers to come in and almost reset the way education is being introduced to the world. Like you said the phrase “those who can’t, teach” and yet we are the ones who are holding up the whole structure of society. Without good teachers, we are building our students on a rocky foundation, and without good core values for education, we are not supplied with the right tools to be that foundation. While most of the problems do come from those higher, those in state standards, I want to be a teacher that shows not only my students but other teachers that there is still ways to bring our own core values and beliefs into the students lives. I want to show my students that while learning the “state standards” we can do such in a way that brings the excitement back into the classroom. Rather than teaching what we feel we have to, teach things and offer other venues for learning those standards. Make there be an interest with the children and their education again. I want to be the teacher that helps children find their passion and find it through the value of learning, of an education.

“What Do You, too, Believe?”

“A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.”- Kurt Vonnegut

In the midst of reading first “The Careful Cultivation of Belief” by Sherri Medwin, and my personal favorite, “Getting Angry Can Be a Good Thing” I realized that in education my main belief follows closely to the quote above. In the second belief essay, I read she mentioned how amazing anger can be but also how hollow that feeling is when it is pushed too far. As an up and coming teacher, I think lots of children feel this way about the whole education process. They get frustrated because the teachers are telling them what to do instead of asking them or allowing a love the share just themselves. The leave feeling hollow feeling the anger of not really feeling the love/ being able to show the love that they believe they have about education. Going through the education process myself and still going through it today, I realize that my main belief follows the application of love. A love shown through the teacher for what they are teaching, but also a way to let their students find something they love to share with the class as well. Rather than forcing the students to believe the same “standards” that the rest of the country is believing in. I think by adding that love we are taking away the anger and hollowness that I’m sure many students feel sitting in a classroom thinking “when will I ever use this”. By adding a love that, obviously, isn’t romantic but more of a general caring for one another in a classroom help shows the students that education can be anything they choose rather than beliefs that we, as teachers choose for them.

“A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.” -Kurt Vonnegut, The Sirens of Titan