Reflection Paper

On September 6, 2017, I were documented for an incident that involved a University Housing policy violation. I was charged with violating the University Housing Alcohol 1.2 policy. With my violation, came consequences. I met with The Residence Conduct Coordinator to discuss my actions and came to the conclusion that I would have to schedule a meeting with The Campus Alcohol and Drug Education Center (CADEC) and with that, a reflection paper.

Mrs. Anderson is the 5th -grade teacher. She has 25 students, but two of her students disrupt the whole class by arguing and fighting with each other. Zack has a specific learning disability in reading. He likes math and geometry, he is a quiet worker during independent work and likes to stay after school to feed a guinea pig. Patrick enjoys telling funny stories and being limelight. He is an average student, likes sports. According to Mrs. Anderson’s observation, Zack likes to argue with Patrick, yelling or crying on Patrick’s teasing or even pushing Patrick if he doesn’t respond to his request. Patrick teases Zack and other students by name calling or making hurtful comments. When called on during class discussion Patrick can give unrelated or inappropriate information ( Star Sheet). It’s a few critical goals for Zack and Patrick to focus during this semester:

Wasted Youth and constant void. Growing up and entering adulthood can be one of the scariest things to anticipate. Adults tell us to enjoy our adolescence for as long as we can, because it won’t last forever. Maturity has its pros like legally being able to drink, ability to drive etc. yet it holds the other aspects like, liability. Adulthood can be an extremely scary thing to anticipate as we will suddenly be exposed to responsibility. Some youth accept this fact while others try to run.

To begin, I have to establish a disclaimer: The person I was working with was currently an inmate at my place of employment which is a Juvenile Detention Center. In any event, I cannot legally state his name, so instead of stating his name, I will call him Joe Smith. Furthermore, Joe Smith is originally from Mexico and was brought over by his mother when he was ten years old. Joe Smith has been in the United States for six years, but he has been in and out of school for several years due to his criminal activity. The detention center offers classes for the inmates, but Joe used to skip the classes up until recently. In any event, Joe’s spoken English is far greater than his written English. The times where I worked with Joe (there were many of them) we mainly worked on his written language and reading comprehension (phonics mainly). In any event, Joe was definitely more of a naturalist English learner rather than an academic one. If I had to categorize Joe into a proficiency level, I would say he is beginning to intermediate when it pertains to writing and reading, but advanced speaking wise. In any event, Joe is a male and he was technically in the 9th grade but should have been in the 11th grade (according to his numerical age).

Overall, I feel as if our presentation went very well. If there was anything I could change it would be having more class dialogue and it not seem so one sided. I also would have liked to ask more questions considering the class already had prior knowledge, of this content. The questions that I would have like to have asked most are the higher order thinking questions; such as, how and why. An example would be, “Why would you select the more colorful curriculum map over the one already filled out?” The anticipated response would hopefully be: “The colorful curriculum map is broken down into each month in the school year; whereas, the filled in map only has two months.” When creating a curriculum map is should be done for the entire school year and not just a month or so at a time. While assessing all of the feedback that was obtained, it was noted that everyone gave extremely positive with minimal critiques. I enjoyed how the class respected our wishes of giving only constructive feedback. The few suggestions for improvement were for me for to speak up, for Brianna to stand up and maybe move around the room, slow down a little (which was corrected as we presented and noted by some), one person said give more guidance on what to write in the organizer, and one said she wished we would have informed them sooner that not all the puzzle pieces would be complete. When it came to the organizer we did not really focus to much on that because we know everyone learns in a different

Over this course, my writing has significantly improved. I have learned a lot of new skills that have helped me become a better writer. Writing drafts has always been difficult for me, and in this course, I learned how to write drafts that helped me write strong final essays. The essay that demonstrates my progress as a writer is my progression 2 essay. In this essay, we were asked to use multiple sources and use them both to work together to analyze an issue relating to a river. My writing 101 class is on water, politics, and place. I wrote my essay on the Columbia River and the impacts that government policies have on the health of the river and the ecosystem surrounding it. This essay shows my progression as a writer because I worked on the writing process by writing drafts, but also shows one of my weaknesses of incorporating quotes.

I believe I was around 6 years old when I began to realize that everyone around me didn’t live or go through the daily routines that I went through. When I began to start talking to kids about what they did on the weekends they never said that they spent 8 hours in the car going back and forth to see their mom or dad, there answers were always something entertaining like “I got to spend the night with Tyler” or somewhere along those lines. Around 7 I started to see that not everyone celebrated the same things such as christmas or easter. My cousins were part of a church that didn’t believe in celebrating such things. To me I began to understand that everyone had different rules at home, different ideas, and different cultures within their families.

“I understand we all have our differences. But while learning about history I've read about white people coming together, Jews coming together, Spanish coming together, different cultures and religions understanding and coming together despite their differences. Slavery was never something that shocked me. What shocks me is how black people have not yet overcome the odds and we're such strong smart people. Why we can't just stand together?” ― Jonathan Anthony Burkett Social Class, Race, and education are all major things that an average young Black male like myself think about on a daily basis.

I grew up in Greenville, South Carolina. Having had grown up in the south, I was always around people who are more traditional in viewpoints, especially when surrounding the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transsexual/Transgender, Questioning, and more community. I received my education at a high school where no one hesitated to throw around extremely derogatory terms. Throughout my schooling I had found close friends who had expressed their feelings of not fitting into their biological sex. Every time I heard them talk about their feelings I felt my heart sinking. I knew it was not fair. I found myself constantly feeling their pain. Feeling all their fear, anger, and sadness along with them because I knew that they lived in fear of people finding out who they really were and what their reactions might be. It broke my heart that they were forced into constantly fearing for their safety.

Imagine dreading an assignment so much that you don’t even want to start it but once you finish it you look back on the experience and realize it was good for you. That’s what happened to me during my Junior year of high school when I was assigned a paper that challenged me and grew me as a writer. This writing assignment was a seven to nine paged paper on my responsibilities to America. Because it was the first paper I wrote that was more than a couple pages, I struggled with making it long enough while still keeping it structured and well written. I also struggled with finding what I wanted to write about and how to express it clearly. Although this paper was difficult for me to write, it was a tremendous learning experience for me.

In our everyday lives, we tend to categorize people because of their race, culture, their socioeconomic status, and judge people by their looks, age, ability, and gender. When I was working at a daycare past summer of grade 9, I met one Chinese girl who was around 4-5 years old. One time I witness her classmates making fun of her because she has a asian accent when she talks in English, her eyes are small, her mom works at a restaurant with low pay. Even during break, I would always see her sitting in a corner all alone, while others were having fun. Therefore, I took the courage to talk to her. Throughout the conversation, I realized that she was mad at herself because she has a different race from others, language barrier between her and her classmates and she was ashamed of her mother working at a restaurant because other parents work at a higher pay occupation.

Arriving at college I felt like I had a decent idea of what to expect, because I spent a year at boarding school. The main difference between boarding school, and college to me from the outside, was going to be the freedom of no curfews, no mandatory hours in which you study, no uniforms, and no sexuality segregation within dormitories. For the most part my pre college assumption was right. However, one of the things that I didn’t realize was the amount of different people I was going to meet, and how they would have an impact on me.

Growing up church was not a place we “had time” to attend, and God was not a part of our household. It was not until about four years ago, that I began my relationship with Christ. On July 18, 2011, I began to have nine plus seizures a day; I spent a lot of time in the hospital trying to get answers to my over-night attacks. During this time, I fell into a depression because of the lack of answers. I felt that I was just being given drugs to get me discharged. Many would send prayers, and ask me to come to church, but it was not something I wanted to do. At this point in my life, I held anger in my heart; going to church and hearing about a God I did not know didn’t make sense. My mother was my primary care taker, and dealing with my sickness was not easy. In 2013, she was invited to church by a co-worker, and she took me along with her for the “ride”. We attended citylife church, and from the moment worship began, I was in tears. While the Pastor was speaking, it was like he was speaking directly to me, and I thought to myself, “He must know about why I am so depressed.” At the end of the service, the Pastor asked for those who would like to accept Christ as their Lord and Savior to come up, and I could not get there fast enough. This is where my journey with Christ began, and I learned that it was not the Pastor who was speaking to me on this day. God already knew I would be in attendance on this day, and I needed to hear the message that was given through the Pastor. I

In the summer of 2016 I left on a rare affair to burn through three weeks in India teaching English at a local primary school in a little village. Much to my dismay that the effect it would have on me in my English class in my senior year of high school. Before my journey began my parents revealed to me that this experience would change my view on a considerable measure of things back home and make me more appreciative of all the opportunities I have in the United States. If were not for this extraordinary experience my literacy practices would have been entirely different my senior year.

It was on a cold day in January, 2015 when I thought my whole world was going to be flipped upside down. We were living at my grandmother’s house at the time, and in the back of my mind I knew that we were going to move into our own house because that was the plan ever since we sold our old house. With this in mind, I still remember how I felt when my parents came home one night and said, “Our offer on a house was accepted and that we were moving at the end of summer.” I visited this house with them before, but we visited many houses over the past couple years so it sort of came as shock that everything was official. Living at my grandmother’s house was not ideal and it was no walk in the park so I was happy that I was going to have a place my family could call our own again. Although I was excited, I was also nervous and scared because the house is located 45 minutes away from where we currently live. That meant I was going to leave my friends and family and basically everything I’ve ever known.