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Zoey Mitchell Professor Rebecca Agosta English 1101 19 September 2013 Literacy at an AP Level The time before my junior year in high school I absolutely disliked writing. The thought of writing an essay or English class period scared me because I felt that I was not ready for the type of writing level I expected an AP English teacher to teach. I did not have that much experience with writing essays, but from I understood they were pure death. That was, of course, before I was informed about Advanced Placement classes that can prepare me for college. I enrolled in AP English, starting in late August, for Ms. Walder as my teacher. I thought this was a good idea to take this class because it challenged me to come out of my comfort zone with writing and showed me how to approach any topic, whether difficult or not. As I walked down the hallway of Statesville High School looking for my English class, I was surprisingly nervous. I came upon a door that said, Welcome to Ms. Walders AP English Class, and I turned the handle. I saw a few familiar faces and suddenly this terrifying environment felt like it was where I was supposed to be. I walked around and found my assigned seat and quickly sat down. We went over the syllabus and signed a class contract stating how we, as a class, will strive to be the best student and classmate we can be. Ms. Walder also showed us all the books we will have read by the end of the year and what kind of writing projects that will go along with them. She understood that this sounded a little much for us, but then proceeded with the plans she had for next week.

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The second week of school came pretty fast and I was already comfortable with the schedule. I knew we would be assigned an essay at some point and was a little nervous, as was the rest of the class, but Ms. Walder showed us how to structure a simple and short essay. I questioned why she had this enormous amount of confidence in her new class, because I certainly didnt, and dreaded this upcoming homework assignment. At the beginning of class one day, Ms. Walder passed out a piece of paper to everyone, and I realized from the amount of dreadful sighs that it was a prompt. Well here goes my first bad grade, I said to a friend sitting beside me as she gave me a sad look. We went over the prompt and discussed the requirements for the due date. She also broke down the prompt into sections that would help us better understand what it was asking us to do. We were shown how to format the introduction, body paragraphs, and conclusion, and were able to see student examples of ones that were acceptable and ones that werent. I felt a little better after she had done this. She then gave us time to outline and brainstorm what we were going to discuss in our papers, and this as well gave us time to ask any questions. As I outlined my paper, it felt easy to come up with ideas and opinions to talk about. Two days later my essay was complete, it was a little shorter than I had expected, but I felt that it had met the requirements. I turned it in with my head held high hoping the teachers feedback would be what I wanted to hear. This being the first writing assignment of the year, Ms. Walder did not expect much from us. She gave our papers back a couple days later and I received a grade of a 3. Our essays are graded on a number scale from 1 to 5, each number representing a grade of 100 to 69. I was not only proud but relieved that it was over and I did a fairly good job.

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As the year progressed on, my English writing assignments became much harder and required much more information. They went from simple fun narratives, to full novel responses and literary papers. Even though the requirements were hard, I felt as though I had improved a great deal since the beginning of the year. I now understood a prompt and what it asked me to do, and teachers feedback pointed me in the direction I needed to go in. However, Ms. Walder introduced us to another way of editing. It was called peer editing, and I thought it was the oddest thing to let other students, that had the same amount of writing experience as myself, write all over my paper in red ink with their dumb opinions and taking out and adding words! I did not like this idea, but we were assigned peer editing groups, and I was then forced into it. I was in a group with two other students, and we started by passing our paper to the person to our right. I then knew my essay was ruined. After reading almost the whole essay of my group member, I actually liked it; I corrected some minor grammar errors, but felt that it was an overall great paper. I did the same with the next classmate, and realized this helps. I got my paper back and received positive feedback, as well as suggestions on how to improve some parts. I was surprised on how well these comments helped me better my essay, and that reading others papers showed me different approaches to writing. We did more of these throughout the semesters, and it was good to receive feedback from fellow students that understood the same thing I did. It was about time to move on from the eleventh grade into the twelfth, and I was more than excited to be a senior. This meant more freedom and a step closer to college! But it also meant more expectations and homework. This time around I enrolled in three AP classes: AP English, AP Psychology, and AP Government, and I knew was going to have a busy year. To my surprise, we were required to write even more essays in my classes other than English. My

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government teacher Ms. Denton, taught us another way of writing in which we answer each question she asks in different paragraphs, so this way was much simpler than what I was used to. In my psychology class, since it was online, there were not that many more requirements. My English class was definitely different than any class. I had Mrs. McConnell, and she was a real hard ass. She did not accept excuses and expected a lot from us but expected it to be just how she wants it. Mrs. McConnell was a very scary woman. We read books and wrote papers on them. We wrote papers on narratives and also about a numerous amount of literary devices. All we did was write! This was also where my teacher did not like a lot of my essays. I received some not so good grades, and I could tell she wanted to push us. After a while I got used to writing long papers and reading long books and articles, which helped me become a better reader. For my final project in AP English we were asked to write a reflective essay on how we think we have improved as writers. I thought of how graduation started getting closer and thoughts of leaving became overwhelming but I knew that I was ready. I thought of my friends and my teachers and how learning from them helped me grow into a student in many ways. I knew taking AP classes helped me with writing and reading by boosting my confidence with topics that seemed difficult and how to look deeper into an authors words. I feel that school definitely shaped my literacy because whether I knew it or not, it was everywhere. Simple homework assignments, readings, group work, even studying added to the strength of my literacy, and that was exactly what I wrote about. I wrote about how school was my influence, even though my environment at home helped. I learned more deeply and in a different sense in a classroom. I included how my peers showed me different approaches to an assignment and how their opinions opened my eyes. Also how my teachers believed in and pushed us to go the extra

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mile. I proudly wrote about all my sponsors and my adaption to every one of their definitions of literacy.