My Learning Fall and Rise
On the day August 12, I arrived back to the school grounds and quickly missed the comfort of summer vacation. From what I heard during Sophomore year, Junior year is the one filled with the most stress. The first day back, teachers were just introducing themselves and going over class expectations. As I entered english, I was fairly nervous since it was my first AP course. I was expecting a classroom full of walls decorated since that's usually the case. However, the room was minimalistic, so I was full of curiosity.
When I first encountered my teacher, I was stunned with his accomplishments. I was astonished that he'd done a TED talk and was a professor at UCLA. I started pondering upon the question, "Why would he go from a professor at a well-known university (in California), to a high school that is hardly known?" This led me to think that it was a class that would have higher expectations since the teacher was a former professor.
My teacher was very understanding as to why adolescents dread school. Never in my life had a teacher viewed school the same way I did. In the moment, I asked myself, "Okay? Where is this leading to...?" My teacher described his method of teaching past classes. Open-source learning. At the time I was completely unaware of it.
Once he explained more about it, the idea became more appealing. Near the end of class, he said, "I'm going to step outside and let you all decide how the rest of the year will be. Send someone to call me back when you've decided." (something along those lines). I whispered to my friend, "Is he really serious?"-- and he was. Our class decided on open source learning. It was a whole new way of learning for me.
After being informed that I'll have to do blogs, daily journal entries, upload videos of me reciting poems, I was partly nervous, but somewhat excited. My initial reaction to the blog posts was, "Am I doing this correctly?" I quickly realized there is no right or wrong way of doing it, so I just wrote what was on my mind. Journals are one of the things where we use a notebook and pencil (or pen), so it was something I was already accustomed with.
The one thing I felt conflicted with were posting videos where I recited poems. As someone who isn't that comfortable with uploading pictures or even videos of myself online, I had to. If it's for the benefit of my grade, I'd do it.
After being assigned to memorize the poem "Richard Cory" and asked to film ourselves reciting it, I began to feel so much anxiety toward this task. I'll be honest, I didn't upload it the day it was asked for. I am not one to put aside school work, but this assignment made me do so. This made me question whether or not I'll be comfortable enough to go through with the course.
It was just a matter of adjusting. After every school year, I grow attached to my old class schedule and my daily routines. With my new set of classes, I just needed to get into a regular schedule of doing work. English was one of the subjects I put off in the beginning, although that soon ended.
I got into the habit of trying my best to finish blog posts in class or sometime during lunch, if not I'd finish right when I arrived home. Usually, I have an order of the classes that I do my homework. For example, Math, Spanish, Accounting, English and then Physics. I try to complete homework that are slightly easier and don't require the most thinking first. English and physics are the two subjects that I have to focus on the most and leave me thinking too much. This daily habit of mine, has made me finish assignments more efficiently.
As a learner now, I am more expressive in my writing since there isn't a structure enforced. This allows me to be free with my writing. One essay that showed this was on the post "Let Me Walk You Through the Pedestrian." I addressed more of my thoughts instead of focusing on the given prompt. My memorization techniques have also become better after having to memorize some poems. I'd consider myself to be more open-minded after the four months of being in the course. (It's crazy how it actually flew by this quickly).
An experience in this course that made me smile was from the poem "The Laughing Heart" and the quote is "your life is your life." In the world we live in today, there are so many expectations from people and we try our best to satisfy them. We've learned to make others happy before ourselves. It's the sad truth. This portion from the poem made me smile because as individuals, we are the ones who are capable of controlling our life at the end of the day.
When I first encountered my teacher, I was stunned with his accomplishments. I was astonished that he'd done a TED talk and was a professor at UCLA. I started pondering upon the question, "Why would he go from a professor at a well-known university (in California), to a high school that is hardly known?" This led me to think that it was a class that would have higher expectations since the teacher was a former professor.
My teacher was very understanding as to why adolescents dread school. Never in my life had a teacher viewed school the same way I did. In the moment, I asked myself, "Okay? Where is this leading to...?" My teacher described his method of teaching past classes. Open-source learning. At the time I was completely unaware of it.
Once he explained more about it, the idea became more appealing. Near the end of class, he said, "I'm going to step outside and let you all decide how the rest of the year will be. Send someone to call me back when you've decided." (something along those lines). I whispered to my friend, "Is he really serious?"-- and he was. Our class decided on open source learning. It was a whole new way of learning for me.
After being informed that I'll have to do blogs, daily journal entries, upload videos of me reciting poems, I was partly nervous, but somewhat excited. My initial reaction to the blog posts was, "Am I doing this correctly?" I quickly realized there is no right or wrong way of doing it, so I just wrote what was on my mind. Journals are one of the things where we use a notebook and pencil (or pen), so it was something I was already accustomed with.
The one thing I felt conflicted with were posting videos where I recited poems. As someone who isn't that comfortable with uploading pictures or even videos of myself online, I had to. If it's for the benefit of my grade, I'd do it.
After being assigned to memorize the poem "Richard Cory" and asked to film ourselves reciting it, I began to feel so much anxiety toward this task. I'll be honest, I didn't upload it the day it was asked for. I am not one to put aside school work, but this assignment made me do so. This made me question whether or not I'll be comfortable enough to go through with the course.
It was just a matter of adjusting. After every school year, I grow attached to my old class schedule and my daily routines. With my new set of classes, I just needed to get into a regular schedule of doing work. English was one of the subjects I put off in the beginning, although that soon ended.
I got into the habit of trying my best to finish blog posts in class or sometime during lunch, if not I'd finish right when I arrived home. Usually, I have an order of the classes that I do my homework. For example, Math, Spanish, Accounting, English and then Physics. I try to complete homework that are slightly easier and don't require the most thinking first. English and physics are the two subjects that I have to focus on the most and leave me thinking too much. This daily habit of mine, has made me finish assignments more efficiently.
As a learner now, I am more expressive in my writing since there isn't a structure enforced. This allows me to be free with my writing. One essay that showed this was on the post "Let Me Walk You Through the Pedestrian." I addressed more of my thoughts instead of focusing on the given prompt. My memorization techniques have also become better after having to memorize some poems. I'd consider myself to be more open-minded after the four months of being in the course. (It's crazy how it actually flew by this quickly).
An experience in this course that made me smile was from the poem "The Laughing Heart" and the quote is "your life is your life." In the world we live in today, there are so many expectations from people and we try our best to satisfy them. We've learned to make others happy before ourselves. It's the sad truth. This portion from the poem made me smile because as individuals, we are the ones who are capable of controlling our life at the end of the day.
Comments
Post a Comment