Prudencio 1 Jessica Prudencio Professor Kuroki STACC English 100 10 October 2013 My Educational Autobiography Although I have had

some really bad experiences throughout the years of my education, there were some learning experiences that helped me get to where I am today. I was always favored in classes, and throughout middle school teachers were always praising me for my great performance in their classes. It wasnt until I got to John Marshall High School, tenth grade English, that I experienced tough love from one of my teachers. Throughout my time in Ms. Irizarrys class, I began to realize that studying hard was the way to success; Carol Dweck describes this as a growth mindset. Ms. Irizarry pushed me to my fullest potential and helped me get to where I am today. Every class was an easy A for me. I was a natural and was always praised by my teachers because I would know the answer to every question every teacher would ask, whether it was based on history or biology. I was favored among all my classmates in every classroom that I attended and I was always my teachers good example of an intelligent student. I felt special because I was always The best student, and I was not the only one that felt that way. My parents also felt special to have a smart child. They would always tell me, estamos tan orgullosos de tener una hija tan intelligente como tu en nuestra familia, meaning that they were so proud to have such an intelligent daughter like me. Therefore, I began to think that being smart was the only thing that mattered to my parents. So little by little I started to develop a fixed mindset also described by Carol Dweck in The Perils and Promises of Praise, as students who

Prudencio 2 become excessively concerned with how smart they are, seeking tasks that will prove their intelligence and avoiding ones that might not (1). This mindset followed me all through middle school, and Freshman Year of High School. It was not until I got to my tenth grade honors English class, at John Marshall High School that I began to shift from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset. Ms. Irizarry was not the teacher that everyone wanted for English, she was said to be one of the toughest most meanest teacher in the whole entire school. So I was really scared and nervous when I found out that I was going to be in her class. I remember walking to her classroom; it was like a ticking bomb ready to explode once I reached my destination. Although somewhere inside was one hundred percent sure she was definitely was going to favor me just like all my previous teachers and be great in that class, I could not help but to panic a little inside. I entered my classroom and there she was standing next her desk grinning at all her new students. She was not what I expected; she seemed so harmless and not scary at all. She had navy blue cat eyed shaped reading glasses, black pants paired up with a navy blue polka dot collared blouse, and petite. It was like the total opposite of what Brad Benoiff thought about coach Rick Rezinas in the story Rick (56). Instead of describing Ms. Irizarry as menacing, like Benoiff did. I would have described Irizarry to others as the total opposite. Felling a little less threatened by her appearance, I felt somehow more calmed. Once the tardy bell rang and everyone was seated, she began to talk about the class and what we were going to cover through out the whole semester. All I heard was essays, projects, and a lot of reading. I somehow fell overwhelmed, because most of my previous teachers hardly ever expected so much from their students. I wanted to switch out of the class, but I was unfortunately unable to because all the English classes were full. The next day, she gave us black

Prudencio 3 composition books and the novel Catcher in the Rye by J.D Salinger. She wanted us to write journal entries about what we thought about every chapter, and analyze quotes that we thought were significant. She did not want a simple summary about every chapter; she wanted us express not only what we thought, but actually predict what others might have felt reading this book. At that moment I thought everything she wanted us to do was useless, but reading Bell hooks article of Critical Thinking I came to realize that she was encouraging us to think, she required us to use our imagination, seeing things from perspectives other than our own (Paragraph 9) Ms. Irizarrys class was definitely not an easy A for me. I had to work extra hard to get an A on my assignments. Everything I turned in was not good enough according to her feedback. I felt similar to what Jimmy Santiago Baca did, when he stated that he felt like he was being targeted in, Coming into Language (paragraph 4). I felt like she categorized me as a weak student because I was the only one who was getting Cs on my essays and other assignments. I would go home so stressed, and sometimes even crying because I thought that she hated me. What made it worse, was that I could not talk to my parents about this, because I thought that they would change their perspective of me. Moreover, The class got even more difficult and I sometimes wanted to give up. I began to loose interest in studying because I couldnt grasp the lessons; I was ashamed of getting Cs, and believed that my grade was not progressing. In addition, I knew that feeling sorry for myself and giving up was not going to help me at all. So I pulled myself up and dived in to my writing and reading because I wanted to show Ms. Irizarry that I was actually working hard and not just relying on what I knew from the top of my head. So I began to attend tutoring sessions and challenged myself in English topics that I did not comprehend. I constantly used a dictionary, and a thesaurus to look up words that were interesting and did not know. I began to recognize my strengths and weaknesses through

Prudencio 4 studying and learned how to target those weaknesses. As the semester progressed, I began to notice my grade to improve; my Cs became Bs. I was different; I was not the same little girl who seeked praise from my teachers. I was no longer afraid of not knowing; instead I had an urge for learning new things. Furthermore, My time in that class was coming to end and I knew that I had tried my best. I remember walking out the door on the second to last day of school when Ms. Irizarry called for me. As I walked to her desk, my stomach felt like it was being attacked by millions of bees. I was so nervous! that the palms of my hands were sweating. When I got to her desk, she paused and began to tell me how much I had improved in her class. She expressed how proud she was because I had worked so hard in her class. She apologized for pushing me so much, but that it was necessary, because she knew that I needed that tough love to motivate me to learn. She then told me my grade; I felt a rush of emotions when she said that my final grade in her class was an A. I didnt know whether to cry of happiness or scream with excitement. She then simply said, It was a pleasure having you in class Jessica. Ms. Irizarry definitely did not care about how smart I was, but instead she cared about the effort I made to accomplish the assignments in her class. It was because of her tough love, that I became more confident as a student. I realize now that she was the only teacher in my whole high school learning experience that did not restrain me from thinking. She also helped me improve my writing and reading with her constant feedback, and Im now I am better at writing well-constructed essays in my college classes, at Pasadena City College. I realize that being tough was her technique to encourage me to change, and through that I became a student similar to the student in diary fifty-seven in the novel, The Freedom writers, someone who is not

Prudencio 5 afraid of setback, A truly self reliant person that finds his or her weak link and strengthens it. (Gruwell, 8-9)

Prudencio 6 Works cited Baca, Jimmy Santiago. Coming into Language. Working in the dark: reflections of a poet of the barrio. 1st ed. Santa Fe: Red Crane, 1991. Print. Benoiff, Brad. Rick. Reading Critically Writing Well: A Reader and Guide 9th ed. Rise B. Axelrod, Charles R. Cooper, and Alison M. Warriner. New York: Bedford/St Martins, 2011. 56-8. Print. Dweck, Carol. Educational Leadership. The Perils and Promises of Praise 65.2 (2007): 34-9. Web. Gruwell Erin. Diary 57. The Freedom Writers Diary: How a Teacher and 150 Teens Used Writing to Change Themselves and the World around Them. New York: Doubleday, 1999. 7-12. Print. Hooks, Bell. Teaching Critical Thinking: Practical Wisdom. New York. Routledge. 2009. 7-12. Print.