Education and the Means to Better the Lives of Students - Prof. Tony Spicer, Thesis of Creative writing

Download Education and the Means to Better the Lives of Students - Prof. Tony Spicer and more Thesis Creative writing in PDF only on Docsity!

Education And The Means To Better The Lives Of Students Kaleb Bellaflores Eastern Michigan University WRTG121: Researching Public Exp. Tony Spicer October 5th, 2023

Education is one of the most time consuming things as an adolescent. When it comes to high school, it is arguably one of the worst things if you don’t like it, and if you do like it there is usually a specific reason. It could be because of a teacher or certain subjects depending on what you like studying! I like school, I think I did because of my teacher Mr. B Barden. I loved science and everything related to the subject. My teacher played a big role in my influence coming into this field. Making me do more challenging work than others in my class, encouraging me to sign up for activities to demonstrate, taking honors for his class, staying after class, and helping kids with sections. Every year he helped me be the best student I could be. He pushed me into getting into NHS, being an A honor roll student my three years, being top 10 in my class, and it was all credit to him. He pushed me to be the best-educated student I could be. What does it mean to be educated? To me, there’s only one thing that comes to mind. Having a diploma in high school helps pave the path that you take in college. Also, another big thing to me is if you are educated, you know society’s view on right and wrong. They should have strong conversation skills, learn to be approachable, and understand math and language skills! Especially with the need to communicate with people in this Society. In today’s social environment in school, there are some things we lack as a whole that we aren’t taught or not reflected on enough. A lot of people could be taught through being street smart or book smart. To me, I was both, But more book-smart. I just was always learning or trying to get smarter. I got held back per my parents because of my age in 1st grade, which is common for children to be held back because of their ages. That whole summer

should be getting suggestions and guidance. Now the graduation rate is in the bottom 50%. Our curriculum is so easy but our graduation rate is low. There are only 339 people in our high school. We didn’t allow a school of choice for our district. We didn’t allow people or athletes that were from an early college to play at our school or to come to our school and learn, to bring more kids there. If we did, it was them getting an address and going through the hassle of just trying to come to our school. Our math proficiency was below 10%. I believe our math teacher we had was not meant to be a teacher. She was a very kind person but for teaching math, she shouldn’t have been teaching it. She was the kind of teacher who would use every other resource to teach except herself. For example she would say, “Did you look at the book, did you look online for the person teaching you through the video?” then she would say “Did you use your notes?” she would just write it on the board and not explain in any detail the lesson. She’s the only teacher that made my GPA drop from 4.0 to 3.7. Our reading proficiency was a little bit better with an estimate of 34%, which was significantly better than math. ("Bendle High School," n.d.). According to Mcneil, in personal communication, Sept. 2023, Our teachers that were teaching writing and reading classes like history were pretty good just by looking at the statistics he said, Dr. Sayers was one of every student's favorite teachers! He was the kind of teacher to never see him sad, good positive attitude, and everything about him and his teaching style was down to earth, and straight to the point. I believe if we had more teachers like him our school would be part of the board, our school would have better education styles, opportunities and curriculum definitely would’ve been different then these statistics.

I believe teachers should listen to more of a student’s perspectives and their active role in how they learn. I felt like we didn't have a say in which we should. We all learn differently so how come we can’t give suggestions and ideas on learning? Another thing for the school is teacher training. I feel like there isn’t enough teacher training for some schools, especially what I hear online. According to Barden, personal communications, Sept. 2023 I feel like teachers should have to do training after the school year is over based on their standardized statistics from that year and look for ways to improve. I know it’s based on the students and how they do but still reflect on the teacher, going back to what I said in the beginning about listening to feedback on what students like better and what they should do. According to Chapman, personal communications, Sept. 2023 I had a friend whose son didn’t care about school and didn’t care about his grades but was smart, just lazy. He said it was boring to him whenever he learned something at our school. You would look at his grades and say he was an average student, but when you look at his demeanor, you would be left shocked and ask if that’s his true score, or did he cheat. No, that was his true score, ACT, and SAT were both nearly perfect. Mind you, he didn’t have any scholarships. He never applied for school, he had no schools trying to pay for the academics until he started to get all these letters in the mail from schools trying to grant him academic scholarships. I think the ACT and SAT do matter because you get more opportunities, does it make you smarter? No, I didn’t take my ACT or SAT and to me I’m smart, I know I’m not the smartest but I'm smart! Ever since I started college, my experience has been a faster pace, more independent work. I love it, college is what I pictured it to be, do your work on your own time, if you don’t then it will reflect on you. Come to class and learn, not much

and journey. Being educated has a different meaning to everyone but to me, it’s a big deal. If you are not educated in society now, what jobs can you work where it will support you? It starts in high school with what you are being taught, because if you are not being taught correctly in school, you lack many different skills that affect you in the future. Overall, being educated is big and it starts with the right education. It is going above and beyond for students to get the understanding of the content so they can be successful for future generations.

References Bendle high school. (n.d.). Public School Review. https://www.publicschoolreview.com/bendle-high-school-profile