Writing scares me to DEATH! I decided to return to school and to start with an English class because for so long writing was the reason that kept me from going back. I walked into the building and I thought to myself; what was I thinking? I suck at writing! I don’t have a creative bone in my body.
The moment I walked into the classroom, the first thing I did was discuss with Mrs. Boyhan my evaluation form, my lesson plans, and I also asked her to sign some of my workbook sheets which needed to be signed. She told me I would not be able to do my lesson plans next week because the students would be taking yet another state exam. This was disappointing. While I had been speaking to Ms. Boyhan, the other teacher was teaching how to write a document based question (DBQ) essay. She explained what the rules were.
My English is so poor; I want to improve my English. First time, I avoided classes that involved a lot of writing, as I was still intimidated by past failures. But when poor writing began to affect my grades in other courses, I decided to take a composition class. Now, I use my On Course textbook in my English class, this journal will help me about self-awareness. I began to see how negative scripts could cause problems.
Before handing out my essay, I had Mr. Smith look my paper over to get his thoughts on how it read. The first thing he said to me was “check your spelling there are a lot of mistakes and you don’t want your peers to think you’re stupid do you?” I didn’t know what to think of this, I thought I had spelled a lot of the words correctly and when I asked him which ones were misspelled, he told me it was my responsibility to figure it out. I didn’t rewrite the paper before handing in out to my classmates and it went horrible wrong. My classmates started to speak out loud about all the spelling mistakes I made and that my essay didn’t make sense. I felt ashamed and embarrassed by what they were saying to me, that was the beginning of my fear of writing.
I was afraid to approach my teacher that morning because of her mood that I decided to remain uncomfortable and suffer in silence. Miss Y turned to the class and said there is to be no talking for the rest of the day and anyone who talks will be punished. Being seated at the edge of the seat I quietly whispered to the other student next to me to move around a little so that I can get space to write properly as half of my book was off the desk. Miss Y turned around and asked me why I was I was talking when she said no one was to speak. I tried to explain to her the situation and she shouted at me to shut up.
Even ourselves do, but we don’t really notice that we do. Most common time we do this is when we meet new people or simply talk to other people. Since we cannot know what someone has been through at that moment we judge them based on how they talk and how they act at the time. To give an example from my own life, me and a friend of mine were sitting at the school and she was so quiet that day, first I thought I offended her in some way or even she was upset with me but later on she told me she was sorry for frowning all day and said she argued with her parents and that we were ok. At that time I misjudged her actions and believed something out of my imagination. Examples like this and many more occur in our lives commonly, but we’re not always aware of it.
For instance, if a student has spent all night writing a midterm paper or studying for a difficult test, then he or she might just accidentally fall asleep in class. This type of student may get bonus points for even going to class. Moreover, if the subject is boring and the student already knows the material (i.e. he or she has already studied it or he or she has read the material at home) then the student might have a valid reason for sleeping in class. However, this does not mean that students should be encouraged to work very hard at night and then just take it easy in class the next day.
I talk to my friends in a different way than I should, so when I begin to write, I write what I’m use to speaking. This is another major problem I have in writing because I will never learn how to write proper English. My third goal is to focus and understand a piece of literature. In other words, if we begin to read an uninteresting book, I start to slack off and not pay any attention. I need to learn to get use to books that I never imagined me reading because I don’t have a choice but to do it.
When I eventually transferred to public schools, the issues that everyone overlooked because they were not an obvious problem for me really came back to haunt me when I was assigned any sort of extensive writing assignment. I continued to take reading classes in public school. Fortunately, I managed to get through my English classes and graduate high school never expecting to have to write any sort of paper again. While I thought that to be true for the first two years out of high school, that proved to be a poor mindset to have. June
When students are in class they are texting in some way. They do it behind their back, in their book bags, or in purses. They act like they are getting something out and then hurry and text who ever back. “I can’t tell when it’s happening, and there’s nothing we can do about it,” Deborah Yager, a high school chemistry teacher said. “And I’m not going to take the time every day to try to police it.”