Finished with Finals

I'm done with my finals. I only took Art Class this semester and I passed with a 97% . I am very happy with my final grade. I am almost done with school. I just have math and science left. I can't wait for the adventures that lay beyond college. For my art final We had to do another self portrait. I went for Ancient Egyptian queen. I've loved Ancient Egypt ever since I was little and in the fifth grade when we had to write a paper on what we wanted to be when we grew up I was about to write down Anubis Priestess, but my teacher told me to choose another job.

I chose to be a writer and it has been the greatest choice I have ever made. I like writing because you can mummify people without all the hard work and waiting. I kid of course. Writing gives me the freedom to travel to the furthest places of the imagination and meet the people I would never be able to meet. Writing has been the greatest adventure for me and I look forward to the day when I hold my first published work in my hands. Becoming an author is the next great adventure for me.

A Timeline of Teachers

The true test of a teacher is whether they can get their students to believe in themselves. I've had many teachers over some good, some bad, and some that were somewhere in between. These are the teachers that taught me about writing today.

In the 6th grade I was put into Special Ed because they had no idea where to put me. I was confused by the schedule because it said Special Ed was in a trailer. I later learned that this trailer was outside of school on the sweltering asphalt right beside the track and basketball court. It seemed strange to me that the people needing extra help were place outside of the school. I met Mrs. Green and thought she would be the teacher for me, but things changed. During our lessons I began to notice a man in a blue dress shirt listening in. Sometimes he would catch me staring at him and his light blue eyes would cross with mine. I would duck my head not wanting him to know I that I was staring. Then not even in the first quarter of our semester Mrs. Green told us she was being transferred to a different school and that the man, Mr. Rasch would be replacing her. I don't like change and I was sure this was going to be the change I would dread the most, but it ended up being one of the best changes. I used to love writing in Elementary school, but after teachers complained again and again about my hand writing I began to develop apathy for it. One day I refused to write and after a long debate Mr. Rasch asked me, “How do know that you don’t like writing if you haven’t tried it? Just pick up the pencil and try. I don't care what you write, just write.” He handed my first wide ruled cherry red notebook and forced a pencil in my hand. I began to write like I had loved to so long ago and Mr. Rasch rekindled that flame in me that had almost gone out. He began to teach me the mechanics of writing, where to put quotes on dialogue, the difference between their and there, and the tricky words that are similar, but are different in meaning like reveal and revel. He even let me read one of my early (awful) stories in class known as the Legacy Riders and taught me that the best way to correct your writing is to read it out and not to be afraid of the harsh criticism to come.

In the 7th grade I began to write longer stories and started on my first novel. I was worried because I wouldn't be seeing Mr. Rasch as much, but he assured me that change was good and it was. I met Ms. Villa or as I liked to call her Ms. Viva Diva, she did have this exceptional flare for the dramatic. Ms. Villa was Hawaiian born and raised before she moved to Colorado. Aside from her room being decorated in all purple I noticed the Orlando Bloom posters above her desk and wondered what kind of teacher she was going to be. She turned out to be a very fun and energetic teacher and she noticed my skill for writing very early on. She taught me how to spell important words and build my prose. She was the first one I shared my very first novel with. Although the novel wasn't very good, she encouraged me to continue to write. "You'll only get better from here," she'd always say. After the 7th grade I was worried I wouldn't have her like, but Ms. Villa wasn't done with me yet and requested me to be her Teacher Assistant. Aside from making copies for her and helping her with the occasional prank on another teacher she would let me have time to write. Sometimes she would glance over my shoulder and tell me what I needed to fix. Come Christmas time she gave me the books that would influence my fantasy writing for years to come, The Chronicles of Narnia. She told me if I read and learned from great Authors I could become one. 

8th grade also gave me my most interesting teacher to date Mrs. Lewis. Mrs. Lewis recognized I was gifted in writing early on when I was able to give all the names of the Grecian gods in a test correctly. She began to give me names of books I should study and read. She spurned my interest in Edgar Allan Poe and the strange and macabre things he would write. It was in Mrs. Lewis class that I began to read books like Frankenstein, Dracula, and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. At the end of Middle School Mrs. Lewis later awarded me with the Edgar Allan Poe Award for most likely to become a writer.

In the 9th grade after being diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome right before High School, it was an exceptionally hard transition, a transition made all the more difficult by the sudden abrupt change in scenery, people, and teachers. One of the first classes I went to was with Mrs. Ramsey. She was already a legend in her own right. She had done more than a 100 mainstay productions at Westminster High School. Her drama classes taught me more about how to communicate and get up in front of a class. Later on into high school I would have her as a Language Arts teacher and these classes proved to be instrumental in my writing. I learned how to just write and keep on writing even if you know what you are writing sucks. The best part about writing is that it’s not a performance because you can go back and change it.

In the 9th grade as well after a long day I made it to my Language Arts Class where I met Ms. Minter. I had met her previously in a parent teacher conference to talk about my disability. Ms. Minter became instrumental in my success at High School. She was one of the greatest helps to me. After 9th grade she asked me if I wanted to use my talents for writing and join Yearbook class. I joined yearbook and stayed in yearbook for the last three years of High School. I started slowly in Yearbook, not really knowing what I was doing, but all the while Ms. Minter pushed me just enough to get me going. I began to write the beginnings of the yearbooks upon her urging and in my Senior Year I became the Editor In Chief. Ms. Minter perhaps is one of the only people who saw my progress from being a semi-functional adult to a high-functioning adult. Over the years the conversations about me slowly changed into asking Minter about her life and interests. Minter was really the only one I could practice on without the fear of being judged. Her belief in me helped me learn what I would need if and when I became an author.

Senior Year I was going to take Ms. Minter's senior seminar class, but she decided last minute that she wasn't going to teach so I received Mrs. Sobol instead. Mrs. Sobol would be the teacher that decided it all for me. I knew I wanted to be an author and our Senior Seminar class focused on the fundamentals of the jobs we would want outside of High School. Mrs. Sobol spurned my interests in writing and funneled them down into something useful. At the end of Senior Seminar we presented our projects that we had been working on throughout the year and she was indeed blown away by my progress.   

By College I began to focus and work on becoming an author. Perhaps the best class I took on writing was not about the mechanics of writing at all, but the stories of American Literature where I met Mr. Morris. Mr. Morris' class was engaging because we read the text and then discussed what made the story good or bad and how they implemented a theme and foreshadowing throughout the text. I later went on to take Mr. Morris' fiction writing class and he told us it would be the class to decide whether we were writers or authors. We were tasked with the challenge of doing Nanowrimo as our end project. If we could write 50,000 words in a month we were well on our way to writing other great books. Mr. Morris helped pinpoint the weaknesses of my stories and I was surprised to find out that the strength of my stories was in the dialogue and he told me to focus more on the dialogue rather than the action itself.

The college class that surprised me was of course the one I was dreading to take. We had a choice between Speech and Debate or Interpersonal Communications. I don't like arguing with people so I chose Interpersonal Communications and met Hermy McCabe. She preferred to be called Hermy because she felt being called Mrs. McCabe was too formal. She would be the teacher that finally pushed me to write my memoir, though I had been working on it since High School. I thought I wasn't ready to write it because a lot of the memories were still too raw, but she assured me that the best time to write is now and never later. I learned that Hermy was a self-published author herself and she began to teach me a few tricks of the trade. There is no doubt in my mind that I was supposed to meet Hermy at this point in my life so that I could go onto my dream of becoming a published Author. 

Tis' the Season for Holiday Cheer

I've been sick for about a week now and I finally felt better to get up and decorate the Christmas tree. We have six popcorn tins filled ornaments so it was quite the undertaking (wait until my mom decorates the entire living room). Christmas time is one of my favorite times of the years besides Thanksgiving. Its also a great time to be with loved ones. As you can no doubt guess I love my family very dearly. Our traditions over the past years included not putting names on the outside of the presents, but on the inside to make the gift of giving more fun. When my nieces and nephews got older we changed this so that they could find the ones they wanted, but they still delight in opening all the presents. Despite the change of traditions one thing remains the same. Christmas has always been centered on Christ, "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life" (John 3:16).

Deviation of Tests

Recently I watched John Oliver's take on standardized testing (if you'd like to you can watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6lyURyVz7k) and I had my own feelings about it as well. My life has been a standard deviation of tests. I was born in 1992 and by the time I was nine in 2001 Bush initiated the No Child Left Behind Act and I began to see an increase in tests at school. I went through many tests when I was younger and the tests only built. In the 3rd grade when we were taught to write cursive I was constantly badgered for my bad hand writing and the inability to fill in the bubbles on tests correctly, they were not dark enough. Then in the fifth grade they tested me and figured out I had Dysgraphia, which not only causes the tremors in my hands, but also my bad hand writing. With the new diagnosis and poor CSAP (Colorado Model Content Standards) scores I was placed in Special Ed Class a sweltering white trailer on the asphalt outside of the Middle School. Special ED was a strange place for the school to put those of us who didn't test well or didn't know how to test. In Special Ed we were faced with even more tests to improve our reading scores. We were given the SRA (Student Reading Assessment) a test, that seemed it was made for a third grader rather than a 6^th grader. I got out of Special Ed, but was still required to go through SRA classes every single year in Middle School. By the seventh grade tests showed I was writing at a 9th grade level, but I was testing at a 5th grade level for math. At the end of the Eighth grade right before summer came I was tested and diagnosed with a form of High Functioning Autism known as Asperger Syndrome. 

When I got of High School I hoped that there would be an end to testing, but there was only more. Teachers took time away from their teaching to teach us how to test. We continued with CSAP and on top of that we had additional math and writing tests every semester to see if we improved. By senior year I was all too familiar with testing, but we began to prepare for a new kind of test, the ultimate test, ACT. We were taught to speed through the test, yet take our time, an oxymoron unto itself. We were taught to speed read in order to get all our answers down. When the time came to take the test we were made to think we were skillfully prepared. The added pressure of time only added to the stress of taking the test. I scored low on the ACT not enough to skip the Accuplacer required to get into Front Range Community College. I wondered if would be able to get out of the Accuplacer because of my autism, but I learned a hard unwavering truth: When you become an adult with autism there is no more help from school for you. The only help given is extra time on tests and the possibility of using a laptop in class to take notes. I took the Accuplacer test and placed into an intermediate class for English, but I failed to place in Math meaning I would have to pay to take the Accuplacer again so that I could get into an intermediate Math class and Math class in the same semester. Though there have been egregious tests I have learned to excel in spite of them. I am member of Phi Theta Kappa and an honor student. So what has testing taught me? Testing has taught me two things: 

1. It is a select skill that all too few students have acquired

2. I am not good at taking tests.

What does this mean? America has taught its students to test and to test well. If you can test well, maybe you can go to college. If you test well maybe you can get your degree. If you test well you can get another advanced degree. If you get a degree maybe you can get a job even though you don't require the job experience for it. Once you get out in the real world it’s the set of skills you've been given and not the exactness of how you've taken a test. Do you see the problem? The problem is always maybe there is no definite yes. Why should college hinge on a single test that if you fail you are barred from your degree until you succeed? Shouldn't college be opened to all those who want to strive to achieve? Shouldn't college be a place not of privilege and eventual poverty, but of a place promise and hopes for a brighter future?