Beyond the Syllabus: Lessons Learned from Classroom Experiences

After listening to the class discuss how they had interpreted the first chapters we were assigned, I began to become intrigued with how Jaramillo wrote and described things. The sudden revelation came to me that Jaramillo conveyed her points through the use of figurative devices. Through the help of the teacher I had come to realize that literary analysis is fascinating. To start with this is what I have learned in class essay where I want to share with you what influence my English teacher had on me. So my English teacher in sixth-grade truly liked all things figurative. She was the nicest woman I ever met, and she had a great sense of humor. With her support and encouragement whilst I was reading the first few chapters of Wonder, I had a major revelation: if I had just put in more effort in earlier classes, I would have been able to come up with these ideas on my own.

This frustrated me to no end, so I began to pour all of my free time into analyzing this text and getting everything out of it that I possibly could have. I then began to become intrigued with the English language. All of the imagery and character development that I was so intrigued with bloomed from Jaramillo’s creative use of the English language. Jaramillo has a very individual way of describing events, I had come to realize. Class discussions forced me to recognize that she would use vivid imagery of emotions in order to intrigue the reader and get her audience thinking about the core message of the novel. For example, in the novel, Jaramillo writes, “When given the choice between being right and being kind, choose kind” (Jaramillo). In this quote, Jaramillo paints an image of this choice, which people have to choose to be right or kind to others. Jaramillo’s point in writing this is because demonstrates that people are sometimes but through the ultimate choice of something that they love and what is seen as correct.. This reflects the choices of Jaramillo’s time, and represents the theme of the decisions making over two difficult choices that question all morals. These complex ideas are examples of things that I would have never picked up on if I did not have the help of my English teacher. I would have been flabbergasted without her ability to assist me through this work. I was astonished by this book. I could not help but just fly through the pages. I would sit in my dimly lit room, motivated to continue reading, still awake at one in the morning, reading Jaramillo’s novel. I had never experienced something like this before with a piece of literature that is so well renowned through the ages. I learned that I love to put pieces of literature together as if they were a puzzle that paint a beautiful story of tragedy and love.

I felt the need to finish the next page before going to parties and hanging out with friends. It got to the point in middle school where I almost skipped my athletic commitments because I felt motivated to read the next page, which turned into paragraph and word. After we were finished with Wonder, I had a completely different outlook on life. The next book read in middle school was almost ruined what the first couple months built up. Hamlet by William Shakespear was an interesting but very difficult book to read as a sixth-grader. The word choice was even more intense than that of Jaramillo, but this time I was not concerned as I had learned my way around this once unfamiliar use of language. I no longer treaded lightly in class; I was one of the most prominent students this time around due to my motivation to succeed in anything I do. When it came to class participation, I spoke all my lungs out in that class when we read Hamlet, as if I could change the time that I ignorantly wasted in my English classes. I was determined to redeem myself and get everything I could out of the last couple of weeks of my class. As one might expect, I began to exceed in English class and my grades, toward the end of the year began to soar. My analysis of text deepened, my teacher would always say that I can write “a mile wide and an inch deep”, which was confusing at first but I understood after my profound realization. I could not get enough of language, and I began freely reading books in my spare time. Naturally, the feeling of motivation is one that cannot be denied. Jaramillo’s use of rhetoric has intrigued me in how I can create my own writing. My experience with reading this novel, which I had assumed would be awful, had actually caused me to change the way I go about completing any task handed to me. There is so much to learn about it, so many different ways to get a point across to whoever will listen. I had never known that feeling motivated to do something truly helps feel accomplished afterwards. My new ability to become motivated to do something changed the way I look at challenges. This newfound love for motivation, ironically, stemmed from a place of not wanting to learn the vocabulary in my sixth-grade year.

So that is what I learned in english class essay, examples pf personal lows and development. To conclude I want to say thta I thought that I would never learn to learn. Growing up, it was my worst skill and I dreaded it every day. Now, I sit here smiling in my bedroom, laughing at my teachers from a new perspective. I am a math tutor and assistant manager of a tutoring business for standardized testing. and I could not have done it without the motivation from other people. When I once found class to be boring and redundant, I now cannot get enough of it and I want it to be incorporated into the rest of my life moving forward. I am forever grateful to my English teacher for staying so persistent with my foolish attitude and forcing me to appreciate the thing that I would eventually love.