Each and every day, the human mind learns something new. When you are young it happens rapidly and continually because there is so much that you have never experienced. You learn to stay away from fire when you experience its heat, and learn to be careful on stairs when you experience pain from falling. Then you become older. You are more aware of the obvious information, but still need to continue education in school. However it is what you learn in school and how that information is presented to you that really defines what you know. Out of the average fourteen years of education (excluding college) that are available to children, I have personally been through each one. From preschool through the beginning of my senior year, in between three different schools, and with countless different teachers, my education so far has been very memorable.
It all began at age three when I attended preschool in my hometown of Hampden Massachusetts. Hampden, being such a small town (population around 5,000), I already new most of the other children and socializing was not a problem. My teacher was Mrs. Jennifer Pellaquin, a sweet young woman who often brought her dog (a golden retriever named Delta) to school with her. Delta was a special needs dog that played, napped, and even did arts and crafts with our class. I remember once we were doing a project where we put a piece of paper down in the bottom of a tin, and then rolled marbles over it that were covered in paint. This created a beautiful and sporadic pattern. After we all finished our individual projects, she showed us what a dog's footprint looked like by having Delta step in the paint and create a print on the paper. It strange how after so many years I can still remember some of the smallest projects, but I believe that’s what makes a good teacher. The people that make an impact on you so much that you are able to remember what they taught you years after the fact; those people are the best teachers. As in an average preschool, my friends and I played house (I was always the mother), kitchen (I was always the head chef), and school (I was always the teacher). Also, there were several attempts at making us learn the alphabet and numbers through colorful puzzles and catchy songs, as well as putting letters together on a piece of paper or reading these same letters in infinite combinations. As mothers do with their unborn children, we were played music while we did arts and crafts in an attempt of some form of stimulation. Other than these few memorable instances, my preschool year was mostly too long ago to truly remember.
Next came Kindergarten. My teacher was Mrs. Disa, a creative middle-aged woman who was actually very close to my grandmother. She would always read to us, especially nursery rhymes and fables. Once she even brought Mother Goose (one of her friends with an elaborate costume) to do some activities with our class. I can recall Mrs. Disa's teaching style, though I obviously did not know this at the time, to be mostly reliant on her personality. This brings up the idea that it does not matter what is being taught, but rather how the information and material is presented that determines how well the student can process and retain that information. If this is true, Mrs. Disa was the embodiment of the concept for she would read us stories with such passion, embodying every character so it was easier to follow along with, she would inspire us to do everything to the best of our ability, meanwhile maintaining a "calm and courteous" disposition. This, along with preschool, was an example of kinesthetic learning, where we were taught through doing. Guidelines for games were set up and ideas for projects were always there to insure some form of structure, and we played, watched, imagined, and learned all at once. Class time was a fun experience, that is until a teaching assistant started helping out every other day. Her name was Mrs. Brown, and she was everybody's first experience with a stricter educator. The only real memory that I have of her was when we were making a wreath for Christmas time and she was the one supervising the cutting and hot-gluing of all the fabric. I remember telling her that I was not good at cutting in a straight line and asking her to help me. When she refused and made me do it myself, she saw that I was telling the truth and accused me of ruining the entire project. I don’t think that I will ever forget how when she made me cry she huffed and walked away. Needless to say, there was some relief that came with graduating from kindergarten and entering the numbered grades.
For somebody like me, there is one part of the summer that, after doing nothing for so long, you tend to look forward to. This is the day when you get the letter saying what teacher you will have for the upcoming year. Again, I grew up in a very small town. One so small that everybody that I knew, everybody that my parents knew, and even sometimes my own parents would have had the same teachers as I did and could tell me what to expect from them. I tell you this to preface the look on my mother's face when she opened that letter that I had been waiting all summer to receive. I looked at her in utter confusion for she looked like she had seen a ghost, and then she said "Mrs. O'Sullivan." I had heard stories from when my mother had her for first grade, and she was the only teacher that I really hoped I wouldn’t get, but I decided to make the most out of a bad situation. So nervously I went to school each day, and each day I realized more and more what my mom was talking about; this woman was so strict. Everything was taught with us sitting at desks that were lined up facing the black board and projector. She would show us addition, subtraction, how to read, and how to write in cursive. There were workbooks, textbooks, and books that I thought were just for show all lined up along the sides of the classroom. She would make us read out loud to the class (the scariest part of the day), and write out cursive letters until our hands cramped. My class did not know at the time, but this was a rude awakening as to what was to come in the following years of our education. Everything was bland, boring, and difficult, which was a great contrast to my two previous years of schooling. Yet my most prominent memory of that year was when I broke my leg. I stayed at home for about a week to get used to the cast, but when I got back to school they would not let me use my crutches that much, so a faculty member always had to be with me to transport me in a wheelchair. One day Mrs. O'Sullivan became so frustrated with me because I had to go to the bathroom, that she actually yelled at me! I recall that most of teaching happened through fear, for example she would scold us heavily for not doing homework and shout at anybody that tried to speak out of turn. I suppose it worked out eventually because not only did we not want to speak out of turn, we did not want to speak at all. I feel that that type of teacher really crushes your learning ability in the long run because it teaches you to only follow the rules and therefore prevents creativity.
After first grade, my second grade year seemed a lot easier to bear. My teacher was Mrs. Connors, a middle-aged woman with glasses whose teaching style was not very memorable. I honestly cannot remember what we learned, what we did for projects, or even how the classroom was set up. When I asked my mom about my education in the second grade, the only thing that she could muster out of the corners of her mind was that we had a lot of spelling tests, several tests a week in fact. The only moment that I actually recall is from the last day of school. We had our final spelling test of the year on one hundred words. Mine came back a 100%, but there was an "X" next to one of the words indicating that it was not correct, but this mark was lost on the page and the grade remained a 100%. Once I saw this, I went up to her desk as everybody was leaving for the summer and let her know of the mistake. A few weeks into the summer I received a few books from Mrs. Connors along with a note thanking me for my honesty. The fact that I cannot remember any other part of her class is a very odd concept for me to wrap my mind around. Ever teacher that I have ever had has always wanted to be remembered by their students, and each of these teachers have all had unique teaching styles, but not Mrs. Connors. Perhaps the knowledge gained in her class was some form of subliminal information, like although we do not know how she taught it to us or even if she was the one who did, the information is still ingrained in our minds. I do remember another teacher from this year however. Her name was Mrs. Brannigan and she was our science teacher for the year. Every Wednesday our class would go to the science lab and have a period of time devoted purely to science. I remember that this was defiantly not my favorite time of the week because it always entailed so much work, but looking back now I realize how much fun it was as well. Mrs. Brannigan created many projects for us to work on that taught us about different concepts that we were learning about at the time. For example, when learning about the different states of matter (solid, liquid, and gas), she read us a story and taught us how to make a substance called Ooblik, a corn starch and water mixture that can be classified as a liquid and a solid upon contact. Also we used balloons to make rockets, filled a kid-sized pool with bubble mixture and used a hula-hoop to create giant bubbles, and even made musical instruments with rubber bands and shoeboxes to explore sound. Of course after these labs we had to write up answers to questions, but most kids didn’t mind that because class time was so much fun. We were regressing to preschool in a sophisticated way in that we were learning through doing but this time it was a more organized and goal-oriented environment in which we were conducting these projects. Mrs. Brannigan was always trying to have fun and knew the correct balance between fun and work so she was able to make us want to learn.
Third grade was my final year at Green Meadows Elementary School, and coincidentally, it was my favorite. Reaching the third grade was like being a senior in high school. You could sit in the back seats of the bus, you did not have to stay in two lines for designated bathroom breaks, and you had the best chance of getting a good teacher because they were all amazing. Luckily, I got the most amazing out of the crop (I still think that they put me in her class in apology for the previous two years). Her name was Miss Ross, a young woman that was praised at great length by all of the students that had graduated from the school having her as their last teacher. She kept the class casual, with the desks in a circle instead of a row and colorful posters on all of the walls promoting reading and the benefits of eating your green vegetables. I can remember so much about this particular class. I remember that we had a lot of projects that nobody ever really minded doing. Our first one was on a recent historical figure and I picked Leonard Bernstein the famous composer. To liven up reports Miss Ross always incorporated a fun aspect to the actual essay, and for this I had to dress up as the subject of my essay. Another project that we had to do was on a president of the United States, and I picked James Monroe, our fifth president. For this essay we had to accompany the main page with a cover on which we were to draw our president and, with all seriousness, I maintain that this was my finest piece of artwork yet. We also learned about the solar system and I did a poster about the sun, about Cinco de Mayo with help of my fabulous piñata, and about so many other things that I would not want to continue the list for fear of exceeding my twenty-five-page limit. One of my favorite parts of class, however, was when she would give us tricks for learning math. She had a book filled with short stories all ending in summaries like "you need to be 16 to drive a 4X4," teaching us that four times four equals sixteen. These stories helped me learn so many of my multiplication tables that I even use some of the tricks today. Each week we would be individually tested on how many flash cards with multiplication equations we could answer correctly, and with help from Miss Ross's stories, I improved greatly. We also went on several field trips during that year including Old Sturbridge Village, and had some guest appearances in our class by people with various occupations, and although it was impossible to forget anything from that class, in case we did Miss Ross would always take pictures of everything. At the end of the year she brought in all of the pictures, dispersed them out to whoever was featured in that particular scene, and gave us our final project for the year: to create our own yearbooks. Each picture was to be accompanied by a caption explaining what is in the picture and then you could decorate the page however you wanted. You could even make up your own cover page and final page for our first ever ceremonial signing of the yearbooks. After that year Miss Ross actually took dance classes from my mother for a few years so I was able to keep in touch with her and even be in her dance class for most of her time at my mom's studio.
Making the move from third grade to fourth grade was a big step in Hampden schools because you no longer went to Green Meadows, but Thornton Burgess. This meant that you were a "freshman" again in an older group of people, and the stories of people beating up other people began as soon as I left the comfortable halls of the elementary school. However, I soon realized that Thornton Burgess was not at all as scary as people made it seem. There was a hallway designated for the fourth graders, one for the fifth graders, one for the sixth, and then seventh and eighth grade shared the hallway in the back portion of the school. The bullying issue was the least of my worries anyway, because I had Mrs. Hullstrum as a teacher. Mrs. Hullstrum was one of the teachers that had been in the school system since the beginning of time and held on strong to the old days when it was six hours of sitting in a desk, minus the lunch break and the days when we had gym. We learned mostly by doing, not doing in the kinesthetic way, but doing in the "teaching yourself through the directions on the page" way. She mostly just sat at her desk with her ginger-ale, chomping away on her one red apple, and grading homework sheets from the night before. She was one of those teachers that was known more for her odor than her teaching abilities, and it might have been a year of utter hell if not for her teaching assistant, Mr. Pickering. He came to each class as basically a way to keep the class motivated. He was the one that pushed Mrs. Hullstrum to teach us something, and it was he that suggested every project to try to get us out of our seats at some point. One of Mr. Pickering's best ideas came when we were studying ancient Egypt. He said that we should create a mask of Nefertiti, a model of a tomb where mummified pharos were buried, and even a model of Bast, a famous Egyptian cat that was worshiped as a god. This project was the center of the class's focus for so long, and we put so much effort into it that Mrs. Hullstum finally realized that that was what we needed to be doing in order to become interested in the class. Other than this, however, there were very few instances that I can recall from that year.
Fifth grade was another huge change for me because this was the year that we began to switch between classrooms and teachers for different subjects. I had three different teachers that year: Mrs. Sawyer, Mrs. Moriarty, and Mrs. O'Conner. Mrs. Sawyer was my advisory, English, Language Arts, and Social Studies teacher. She was an absolutely fabulous educator because, like a more reserved version of Miss Ross, she knew exactly how to balance fun and learning and was able to make us want to learn, to keep reading, and to find answers to all questions that came up in class. It was Mrs. Sawyer that brought back the art of reading out loud to her class, and the freedom of creativity within several class projects. She would teach right along with our textbook so we could always follow along, but at the same time would offer us any other information that she could find on the subject that we were studying, thus personalizing each lesson plan and making everything more memorable. For math I had Mrs. Moriarty who was, in terms of style of education, very much like Mrs. Sawyer. I still cannot figure out how she did it, but she actually made me like math class. I remember that she would always relate what we were studying with real life applications, for example it was the year of the Bush/Gore election and she had us make pie charts and graphs of the results. Seeing that all of the work that we were doing actually had a purpose made it easier to learn. We also had projects like creating games that involved math, and my group chose to do an intricate game based on "Clue" that took a lot of focus, but in the end was completely worth it. Finally, my science teacher was Mrs. O'Connor, my favorite out of the three (basically just because I liked science the most out of all of the subjects. In retrospect all three of the teachers were equally incredible). Every Thursday's class period for one term was spent watching a movie on biology (specifically marine biology), answering questions about what we saw, and learning more about each concept presented in the film. This made it a lot easier to learn than just reading in a textbook because we could remember through characters and plot the different aspects of biology. After that unit, we moved on to astronomy and did a few projects on a planet, star, or moon of our choosing. The final unit of the year was physics in which we created our most interesting projects yet. Our assignment was to create a model of an attraction found at an amusement park that used any law of physics that we could think of. I created a model rollercoaster and accompanied it with a two-page paper describing what law it represented. Collectively, it was a very huge year for projects, but I think that because we were able to relate all that we learned to every day ideas, more of the information could be retained and applied in our lives.
Fifth grade was also the year that we were able to spend more time on non-academic areas of study. We had more time in art class each week with our teacher Mrs. Apgar. She was a typical artsy woman with more creativity in one brain cell than I could muster up in my entire lifetime. Art was always fun, not only because there was no homework or tests, but because we learned so many different ways to create art that none of us had ever dreamed of. We would do pottery, sculpture, painting, and drawing, everything that was available to us. We were also able to spend more time in music class. Mr. Ingram was our music teacher who we spent one class period a week with. He taught us about different musical instruments, about famous composers, and the basics of singing. It was so good to finally be exposed to this type of creative outlet, especially for somebody like me who was never very interested in gym. However, this particular class quickly got to a point where it was evident that our teacher had no idea what else to teach us. He began to drift away from songs that he wanted to teach us and become very oddly off-topic. However, when the students of his classes tried to help along his off topic rants, he became flustered and angry that they were not focusing. His awkward personality rapidly became an obstacle for the class to overcome in order to learn anything, and that obviously took away so much from the short time each week that we had with him.
Sixth grade was a big year for my peers and I as well. This was the year that we had the sixth grade hallway all to ourselves. It was toward the back of the school, which meant that it was that much closer to the "upper classmen"; we were making our way up in the middle school world. This year, my advisory, English, and social studies teacher was Mrs. Zawrotney. She was a woman in her early thirties who was, by far, my most strict teacher that year. I don’t remember that much about her class, but I do remember that we did a lot of reading that we did absolutely nothing with. She would give us reading comprehension tests or "free writes" pertaining to what we read the night before, but we never talked about the reading or discussed any themes, plot, or characters. People in the class finally began to understand the stories when Mrs. Zawrotney showed us the video of one of the books. For social studies that year we switched teachers in designated intervals to cover different areas of study. Mrs. Zawrotney taught geography. Basically she passed out giant laminated maps and dry-erase markers each day and we had to circle, outline, or trace what ever she told us to. The only other part of her class that I can remember was in English one day when our principal came over the loud speakers and spoke to the school. I can remember clearly what her classroom looked like from my seat just because I was sitting there when this announcement was made. The principal was making the school aware of what had just happened to our country on that day, September eleventh, 2001.
My next teacher for that year was Mr. Taylor, who is one of my favorite teachers of all time. He taught science and the "Roman empire" portion of our social studies unit. He had a very strict and formulated way of teaching, but he would always keep us interested by telling jokes and using interesting topic ideas for projects. He would have us read the next chapter for science, and then the next day would go over notes and he would basically re-teach us what we had read the night before. We had a little bit of background and then he would show us experiments and applications that related directly to what we were learning. Then for social studies, he would give us situations to act our in class and group projects that would reenact ideas and events from ancient Rome. These assignments helped to make the events of the past real, and through living them we not only learned what occurred, but how we would have reacted to it and what positions we would take.
Another teacher from this year was Mrs. Kase. She taught math and the ancient Greece portion of the social studies unit. For social studies, she taught mostly the mythology of ancient Greece and even let us write our own stories, but for math we did not get to do any projects and most of the class was spent going over homework from the previous night. Like my entire second grade year, most of this class was not very memorable. Again, I feel like in that profession you cannot just be an average teacher and expect to change lives because your students will never remember you.
My final teacher that year was Mrs. Clarke who taught the other half of our grade English and also taught the "Early man" portion of our social studies unit. Only having her for one class, my experience with her was obviously limited, but I do remember that she was the only teacher that year that had re-arranged her room. She put the desks in a circle and then in one corner, she put a couch, a rug, and several throw pillows, which was where we would read or have discussions about whatever we were learning at the time. I know that this is what really taught me to read, or at least how to want to read. I would honestly cherish the time I got to spend reading in silence in the comfy corner of that room so much that I would recreate that corner in my own room. I remember coming home one day and throwing all of my pillows on the floor and finishing all of my books. However, the only real part of the class that I remember was when we had a test on all of the early humanoid beings, but other than that the class was not too exciting.
My seventh grade year was similar to the sixth in that some teachers were better than others and a few were not memorable at all. For English I had Mrs. Schmitt, an older woman who was short, frail, and outrageously soft-spoken. It was always so hard to hear her and she frequently had to repeat main points of lessons or directions to projects. The most memorable part of that class was the weekly reading assignments in which we had to read fifty pages, look up vocabulary words from those pages, and write up summaries. She would grade how well we read the books that we were supposed to be reading for fun. Contrary to what I had learned in the previous year, Mrs. Schmitt made the class dread those assignments and reading in general. Throughout this time I learned how required assignments were less enjoyable than assignments that were optional or self-imposed.
Math was also a rough subject that year with my teacher Mrs. Barrett. She was older, had short, puffy, red hair, and always walked with her nose almost completely pointed to the sky. Mrs. Barrett was one of the few teachers I've had that would never get up from her chair. The desks were arranged in neat rows with a projector and a stool in the front. She would write on transparent sheets each and every day and we would simply copy the notes and do homework that always went uncorrected. That year, the most that I got accomplished was a story that was written each class by my best friend and I. I was always able to finish my homework on time and always received decent grades on tests and quizzes, but I feel like after every assessment of what we learned, I forgot everything and never needed it again. Nothing that was taught in that class was ever enforced for more than a week thus none of it stuck.
For science I had Mr. Peterson who was as kind as he was old. My entire family had him as a teacher at one point or another and all of them absolutely loved him. I was no exception to this as he was one of my favorite teachers of all time. Similar to Mr. Taylor, he was able to teach us through projects, dissections, and his amazing personality. He would tell jokes to keep the class interested, arrange the classroom so that everybody was always involved in a group, and continually pose questions to the class that related to what we were studying. Mr. Peterson was sarcastic but sympathetic and was one of the few teachers that you could actually approach with a problem.
Finally, my social studies teacher for that year was Mrs. Roy. She was a woman in her mid thirties who was, quite possibly, the most inconsiderate person that I have ever met (at least for a teacher). She would read from the book and expect us to know the material and she would never answer questions directly. Yet the most incredibly annoying aspect of her teaching showed on tests. After a full section of regurgitation of dates and names, she would give us a chance to show our opinion. On every one of my tests, my opinion was marked as incorrect. The facts that backed up my opinion were true, and the way that I presented them was orderly and concise, fully supporting my point of view, however I soon learned that my point of view on events and hers did not match up. Apart from that, her techniques were, for lack of a better word, askew. She once decided to teach a class in the style of legalism to make her students understand it more. However, when she pushed that idea far, farther, and over the limit ultimately causing several students to cry. The rest of the class was spent similarly to that of sixth grade, as we were critiqued on how well we could trace rivers on a big map with a marker. This was the first (and last) class in which I received a C as a progress report grade. I was able to pull this grade up to a B for report cards however, because I would stay after class and erase the maps.
Finally, we reach my eighth grade year. This was the second time in my life that I was able to hold a position of seniority because I was once again at the top of my school. Though all of my classmates were enjoying all of the eighth grade perks, I had more important things to focus on like my application process to Suffield Academy and the transcript that I would be sending to the school. This year I really had to buckle down, and a few of my teachers really helped in that capacity.
For English I had Mr. Logan, a short, middle-aged man that looked exactly like the lead singer from Weezer. He taught mainly from behind the projector, as most teachers that year did, and would never forget to assign homework. The main topic of that year was poetry, which made the class a little bit easier for me, but if it was anything else I might have done very poorly because his teaching style did not agree with my learning style. It was hard for me to learn things in that class because every day was the same, and we never did anything other than listen to him drone on about symbolism and metaphors. That is until the end of the year when we had a project to transform the classroom into a poetry café. Our goal was to set the room up to look like a cafe and recite poetry to the younger grades that wanted to come. I still remember the poem that I had memorized for the occasion: El Dorado by E. A. Poe. Obviously this project, our only one all year, was the highlight of the English class. I also remember writing a substantial paper for Mr. Logan in the middle of the year. I cannot remember what the topic was exactly, but I do remember that there were several drafts, meetings with Mr. Logan to go over it, a lot of time spent, and a lot of stressed out children running about.
For science I had Mrs. Fielder who was a tall woman in her early forties that was so passionate about everything that she taught. Although I was never a big fan of her class, I must applaud her sheer devotion to the topics that she demonstrated daily. All of her lectures were absolutely full of life and really sucked you into the world of science. She also tried to get everybody involved with countless labs that were held at least once a week. She had us do projects with solar ovens, measurements, mass, and so many others that after a while they all became a blur. We all appreciated the projects until it became too much. Labs began to overlap and everything got very confusing. This, I suppose, was what they meant when they said too much of a good thing is a bad thing. However, I have noticed that they never say too much of a bad thing is a good thing, because everybody knows that too much bad just ends up worse. This year I also learned first had that this was true. Mrs. Roy, my least favorite teacher until that point, was moving from seventh grade social studies to eighth grade math. At first, the thought of this terrified me. How could I possibly go another year with her as a teacher? Would I get another C in her class? After a second thought, I realized that this could actually be a good thing. I knew how this woman worked and could use this to my advantage. I would bribe her as much as possible by washing down the board after class and still work hard on each and every assignment (luckily there are no opinion papers in a math class). I was able to do well in Mrs. Roy's class and by the end of that year, I could honestly say I didn't mind having to go to math each day.
My final teacher for that year was Mr. Roberts, a younger man who was the most easily relatable of all of the teachers that year. Although social studies was not my favorite subject, having Mr. Roberts as a teacher made it the best class of the day. He would let us have class outside if it was a good day, showed a few movies like Glory to try to keep us interested in the topics, and he would always ask our opinion on events that we were studying. That class was the only reason for me to enjoy school each day, which was odd because I was always the person that enjoyed school and wanted to learn as much as possible. Mr. Roberts made every student want to learn that year because everybody loved his class so much. It was good to have a teacher like that to send me off to what was promised to be the scariest four years of my life: high school.
I remember exactly how I felt when I first stepped on campus. I remember how big everything looked, how prestigious, and how organized everything was. To me, Suffield Academy looked like a college where only the gifted and wealthy were allowed to apply and I was nervous. I went for my tour with a girl named Britt Rock who showed me everything that Suffield had to offer. As I was soaking all of the information in, I became more and more at home. So at home in fact that when we came back to Fuller Hall, my mother said that I "sat right down in that big, wing-backed chair like (I) belonged there." And as it turns out, I suppose I did.
My first encounter with a teacher was actually my advisor and director for the year, Mr. Diamond. He was the best director that I've had in the eighteen years of my life because he was a teacher as well. He taught me so much in the span on one trimester of the play that most directors have put together, meanwhile managing stage crew and filling in as an extra character. He would tell us how to improve our characters by asking certain questions about the roles, teach us countless games to warm up with, give us ways to memorize such a difficult text as Shakespeare, and even give us stage combat lessons. Yet that was only one aspect of this year that did not even occur until the winter term. To truly understand my education, one must begin with the fall term of my freshman year.
Mr. Kraseman was my teacher for freshman physics. He was middle-aged German man that often enjoyed making fun of the soccer team that he coached as well as anybody else that could handle it. His style of teaching was mostly "learn and regurgitate", yet he always threw in labs wherever he could which was fun up until the students had to do a lab write up or any other form of intense work. I remember that he would also try to show movie clips, pictures, or other visual aids to help us remember the more difficult areas of physics, which would especially help me because this was not a very easy subject for me. Overall there was nothing outrageously incredible about this class, but at the same time it was not that bad either.
The class that was really the pin in my Suffield Academy balloon, however, was World History C period with Mr. Lowe, mainly because the style of his teaching and the style of my learning did not line up at all. He would sit at the big, round table in Centurion with us and lecture for the entire class period. Some people in the class liked this because it allowed them to forcefully push themselves to listen and learn about whatever we were supposed to be learning. Although this did not work out for me in my mind, I was still able to stay focused and average an A in the class.
My next teacher was Mr. Vianney for English 1. He would always try to relate what we were reading about to his own life experiences, which seemed like a perfect way to make a class become off track, but in actuality it really helped us remember the concepts and ideas present in the stories. We never had projects, but rather countless papers that always left me wanting to try harder for a better grade, and we did not have lectures, but rather daily conversations about the books, vocabulary, and grammar. I am not exactly sure how he did it, but he not only made us remember the required material, but we also memorized most of his life through the stories that he always told.
First period was spent on most days with Mr. Picconi, or more fondly known as simply "Profe." Profe was my Spanish 1 teacher who was very young, but still able to keep the respect and attention of my large class of about fifteen students. He taught directly out of the book and never varied, so it was easy to keep organized yet everything lacked a sense of personality. Spanish was still fun for me, however, because I could follow along with all of the level one concepts without really trying, so this class was never a real challenge.
This was also the first of three years that I would share with Mr. Yates. This year was spent learning about Algebra 1, one of my least favorite subjects. I learned quickly that my grade in this class hung mainly on my effort on the completion of homework, and secondly on tests and quizzes for each night we were given so much homework that it was sometimes quite difficult to complete on time. However, after all of this practice tests and exams were a lot easier for most people. My second year with him was Junior year in Algebra 2, and finally Senior year in Pre Calculus, each year mirroring the previous to a T. We would have a lot of homework each night, a test grouping together a chapter or two, and then an exam covering everything learned within that term.
My final class during that Freshman year was my first leadership class ever with Mr. Rockwell, or "Rocky" as most call him. This class was added into our academic curriculum to enforce the power of leadership by teaching public speaking, different learning styles, and group versus individual dynamics. Leadership was the highlight of my week because of all of the fun activities that Rocky would let us do. We would rock climb, cook out in the SOLO barn, and even go on hikes, but each one of these seemingly frivolous activities had a purpose and taught us about different aspects of ourselves, each other, and people in general. That was what I liked most about Rocky, that he could teach us something without us ever realizing that we had learned, but the information always stayed in our minds.
Just when I thought that I was doomed to be a freshman forever, I was finally able to move up to my sophomore year. Although this was my only year without Mr. Yates, I had the opportunity to take a class with a teacher that I had had before. Mr. Vianney would once again be my English teacher. This year, however, it was for honors English, and I was prepared to be pushed even harder by Mr. Vianney in each aspect of the class. He did not disappoint me in that arena, for the workload doubled and much more was expected of each student. The class was the exact same in every other aspect, however, because I still heard the same stories to teach the same lessons. The year ended with Mr. Vianney nominating me for the writing center, which I gladly accepted
My next teacher was Mr. Zwirko for geometry. My class was rather small, and the only people that really spoke during class were one of my friends and myself. The first thing that we realized was that Mr. Zwirko liked it when people spoke about math, music, anything to try to keep the class from becoming awkward and boring, and because of this we were always interested in the class. Maybe it was because I am better at geometry than most other forms of math, or maybe it was because he was such a good teacher, but that class seemed to fly by with easy homework assignments and simple tests. I feel like I retained a lot of information as well that year because I was able to apply my knowledge of geometry to my PSATs and SATs.
For Spanish that year I had Mrs. McCarthy. She somewhat strict but was defiantly an amazing person to know outside of class. Though I'm not sure why or how, but this was the first year in which Spanish became difficult for me. I actually had to focus and apply myself as much as possible to keep a decent grade in the class, which was hard for me, because I was used to most information coming easily to me. Mrs. McCarthy taught directly out of the textbook and always assigned compositions, vocabulary quizzes, and tests. Writing papers in Spanish was difficult, not to mention that the tests were always complicated and rarely were finished. For the most part, this year was spent just getting by in my Spanish 2 Honors class.
My first teacher from my junior year was for Spanish 3 Honors and once again it was Mrs. McCarthy, and this year was a carbon copy of the previous in that her teaching style was the exact same, the class size and content was the exact same, and the difficulty was the same as well. Half way through this year I had lost my love for language all together, and tried my hardest to drop the class, yet after two weeks of deep consideration I had decided to finish out the year for the benefit of my high school transcript which I would eventually be sending to college. So I stuck it out and ended up with a solid B in the class.
For English that year, I had the honor of taking one of Mr. Silverman's classes. After having Mr. Vianney for two straight years I was very ready for a change, and that is exactly what I received. Mr. Silverman was so energetic, passionate, and motivational that it was difficult to want to deviate from the topic at hand. All of my best and most heated discussions of a book happened in that classroom because I actually wanted to read and take a stance on the questions that were asked. One of my favorite books that we read that year was The Awakening by Kate Chopin. Each day I would come to class fully prepared to defend the main character against most of the other people in my class because I wanted to be as excited about the topics as Mr. Silverman was. It was so sad to see him leave the school at the end of the year, and I know everybody, including myself, misses him.
For U.S. history I had Mr. Brisette who, like a few of my other teachers from the past, taught mainly through his personality. Everybody loved his class because it was systematically unorganized. Each day we would check homework, talk, learn new material, talk, and go over the next night's homework. Some days we would stay on track for the entire period, and some days we would have brilliant conversations about something that we were not learning about at all, but every class was filled with memorable conversations and experiences that helped us learn the actual material.
A class that I did very well in this year was Biology with my teacher Mr. LaPlante. Each class was spent in the same fashion: students would sit down and watch the slides of a powerpoint as Mr. LaPlante would describe what each slide meant. However he would not only stay within the confines of the slides, he would constantly feed us information on how it relates to other topics that were covered in the class, or applications of different concepts so that we could truly understand what was being taught to us. Yet because there was a concentrated form of the information on the powerpoints, tests and exams were so easy to study for. My favorite part of the class was when we got to dissect a fetal pig in the spring. Anatomy is my all-time favorite subject in science, and when I learned that we would be able to observe a body so close to that of a human, I was ecstatic. Mr. LaPlante showed us how to dissect properly, what to do with the organs, and how those organs worked together within the body. I was so intrigued by this project that it made me want to learn even more, so all of my test scores were rather high on this section of the class. Because he was so passionate about what he taught, just like Mr. Silverman, the class wanted to learn that much more.
Finally, I have reached my senior year, but although my "Senioritis" has set in already, my high school education is far from over. As a senior I have the privilege of choosing electives, and I am taking full advantage of that. My first elected course is spent as a TA in one of Mr. Galvez's acting classes in which I am also conducting an independent study to prepare myself for auditions for college. As a TA, I get to experience on a very small level the responsibilities of a teacher as I am constantly helping the other students to further their acting abilities. Mr. Galvez hardly needs me, however, as he is very capable of motivating his students by giving each class energy and personality along with the needed information and skills. The best part of this class was to see how much the students progressed in such a short amount of time.
I am also so honored to have the ability to take a class this term on Forensics, taught by Ms. Kay (also known simply as Kay). From the very beginning of this class I knew that it would be my favorite because not only was everybody in the class excited about taking it, but Kay was so thrilled about teaching it that she would go through serious preparation before each class to make sure everything was up to the best standards. Most of the class was experiments and labs to keep us interested in the topics that were being taught and to get a better understanding of how each subject was applied to real life cases. There were also a lot of write-ups for the labs to enforce the information, and homework sheets as well. Again, Kay was one of the more passionate teachers that I've had that makes you care about the class because they care.
For my philosophy/religion credit, I chose to take a course on Educational Philosophy taught by Rocky. Having him for the second time, I knew that this class would make me think about education and life in general in a new way, because that is what teachers like Rocky strive to do. Each class we are sat around a big, circular table and listen to the ideas of philosophers, the events that are altering philosophy today, and any other idea that might spark one's brain into a tangent. Most of this class is heard, but never formally responded to (especially by myself), but as you look around the table you can tell that what is being offered to each student is reaching them on one level or another.
For Pre Calculus this year, I once again have Mr. Yates. The class is still the same, always including a lot of homework to prepare us for tests and the repetition of formulas until they are ingrained in our heads. Yet one class that I never could have predicted was my English class this past term. My teacher was Mrs. Dunn and her teaching style was a little out of the ordinary for me. After coming straight from an English class that was full of energy and passion, Mrs. Dunn was lack-luster and frankly quite boring at some points. All of our class periods felt like she had not prepared at all for the class, not expected that we would all want to be doing something in class, and not even read the material herself. Perhaps she was always nervous about teaching or just has a timid personality, but whatever the reason had made the class almost unbearable.
Looking back at all of my past years of education, I can personally say that I am very proud of the work that I have done and what I have accomplished. From the finger-painting in preschool to this very paper, I have been able to take the information that is presented to me, absorb it, and use it. Yet my education was not all about me, but rather about the teachers that have had me in their classes and how those teachers have affected me over the years.
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