Writing Voice

I think my writing voice is something I just discovered throughout this course, at least when it comes to inputting my voice into academic writing assignments. I have always been told by teachers that I am a good writer, but I never enjoyed writing for school.

Throughout middle school, I'd find myself writing witty poems about just about anything, and as I progressed into high school, I realized that writing was very cathartic for me. I began to journal at the end of each day just as a way to process what had happened. Writing became a way for me to uncover what was really going on inside my head, and to recognize any problems in my thinking before they became a larger issue to tackle.

However, all that time, I still hated writing for school. Teachers would encourage me to write more because they enjoyed my pieces, but I just was not motivated. Since being in this class, though, I have discovered that I enjoy writing when I can write about what I care about. This class has given me the opportunity to insert my passions and my thoughts into just about every writing assignment we have had, and that opportunity has made writing not only easy, but enjoyable for me.

For one of the first times I can remember, I found myself painstakingly revising and revising my memoir because I felt so connected to that piece; I cared so deeply about it that the time constraints I were working under were more of a challenge than a looming deadline. I have wanted to refine my pieces as best I could before the deadline, instead of forcing myself to crank out the minimum requirement before the paper is due.

In all of this, I have found my writing voice is really just my heart. My writing is just another way for you to get to know me. If I ever do find myself teaching English to students, I would hope that I could empower them to write about what they care about and uncover their own voice.

Reflection on Writing

For the sake of this blog post, I am going to reflect on my memoir that I wrote on Bekah Griffin. I'm choosing to reflect on this piece because it was the one I most enjoyed throughout the course of this class, but I also think I had more difficulty writing it because it was a subject that I cared so genuinely about, and I did not want to get it wrong.

When I was deciding on a subject for my memoir, I sifted through a lot of people that I admired, but I ultimately landed on Bekah because I immediately knew the one aspect of her personality that I wanted to capture--her passion. Not only did I want my writing to convey her passion that touched my life in such a tangible way, but I also wanted the excuse to pick her mind more about how she got to be the way that she is today.

I hit extreme writers' block when writing this memoir, though, and I realized it was because I so badly wanted to convey all that Bekah is, but I felt like words fell short. So, after some encouragement from a peer review, I realized that less may be more in the way that I attempted to describe her passion but with a hesitancy that I knew I could not do her justice.

Honestly, when I was finished writing this, I was pretty proud of it. I felt like it showed a shift in my writing from being just words to how the writing in itself can convey my message alongside the words. I felt like I had accomplished a seemingly-impossible task--giving people a taste of Bekah without ever seeing her face or meeting her personally. She is a hard person to summarize in just a few pages, but I think the focus on her passion allowed her warm and engaging personality shine through the words. I hope my readers would agree.

High School --> College

In my experience with the realm of education, the transition from high school to college has been emphasized in the most dramatic and kind of scary ways. When I graduated high school, I think I took the hardest aspects of college that I had heard and that guided my framework for how college was going to be. I was petrified that only three tests a semester would make my grade, and socially, I was worried that I would be surrounded by a bunch of alcoholics. But as is the case with most warnings, those tidbits of advice were over-generalizations. In the summer before my freshman year of college, I found myself more worrying about how to combat these over-generalizations I had received than to practically think about the life change I was about to embark on.

I think the most effective way to prepare our students for college is to teach them to recognize their passions. I wish I had gone into college knowing more about who I was and who I wanted to be, rather than worrying about the academic aspect or other people's social choices. If my teachers had helped me develop that confidence in myself, I don't think I would have been as worried as I was.

Yes, the academic rigor will probably increase in college, but I think, in most cases, that is one of the more minor changes. Why don't we prepare our students to stay true to who they are and on the path to who they want to be as they leave for this new stage of life?

Feeling Overlooked

I think that my passion for people who are overlooked began in high school when I felt isolated in my problems. High school is a time where many people are struggling to find their identity, but it is also a coming-of-age time, where many people are beginning to form opinions and passions of their own.

In the midst of the problems I struggled with, especially my struggles with depression, I felt as if my problems were overlooked or dismissed for not being serious enough. If I did have something I felt like I could contribute, I felt like my opinion was hushed or pushed aside as irrelevant.

I remember the moment I decided that I wanted to dedicate my life to helping those who feel overlooked feel seen and heard. This instance was probably more the climax to a bunch of little interactions that led me to so firmly choose to devote my life to this area, but it seemed like a rather large deal to me in the moment.

I was sitting at church with my parents, and one of the elders came up to conduct a vote with the congregation on a new pastor they were looking to hire. I remember being 17, pretty passionate about my faith, and ready to have a say in who was going to be the face of my church. They passed out the ballots, and I circled my response to whether or not I liked the guy, and then the elder said something that shattered my world: “If you are 18 or over and a member of this church, please turn your vote in to be counted.”

I remember being livid after this church service. I understood the need to protect the integrity of the voting process, but I was a member of that church who was probably living out my faith more passionately than some of the adults there. I wanted a say, especially since that church had taught me to raise my voice even when I felt unable to because of my age.

In that small, small instance, I knew that I had to leverage my life to help those who are overlooked feel understood. Too many instances in my life have I felt the pain and the shame of being disregarded, and I do not want anyone to float through this life feeling like their voice or their problems are irrelevant.

Fiction Exercise: Setting

The clock read an hour later than it should have, and it seemed that the calendar read a month earlier than it should have. According to the clock, it was 8:52 am, and according to the calendar, it was March 12. But this just did not seem to click in my mind.

My body chose to nestle deeper into its cocoon of a bed, denying the possibility that this is the weather I was awakening to in the middle of March. My open windows invited in the smell of rain and gusts of cold wind that I thought we had survived the whole winter without. The outfit I had picked out for a warming spring day was no irrelevant, and my mind tried to sleep away the terror of the frigid temperatures intruding through my cracked window. It is as if March realized January never got a chance and decided to let her take over for a few days. My sweaters were shoved in the back alcove of my closet--this was all just a hassle.

And then, it beckoned me. The noise that can awaken me on the worst of days: the coffee pot. The water began to steam as it heat up and finally the noise of coffee dispensing into the pot permeated throughout the apartment, and it almost entirely shut out the intruding cold air from my mind.

The smell of that sweet vanilla candle freshly lit mixed with the aroma of the dispensing hazelnut coffee radiated from the kitchen to my bedroom in the back corner. For some, this combination of scents sounds gross. For me, it smells like home.

Coffee in hand, the aroma of the candle following me, I trekked back to the back corner of the apartment to dig through the black hole that is my closet to find a thick sweater to accompany me throughout this day.

Sweet Learning

Prompt: Choose one of your classmates in this room to write about. Each person will have a different one, so as soon as you choose come let me know--first come, first served! Write about that person in whatever way you wish--it can be a poem, prose, song, anything you want. We are going to present these to the class, and the class is going to have to guess who it is that you are talking about, so make sure you do not incorporate their name into your writing! Make it as descriptive as possible so the class can guess, but don't make it too blatantly easy!

My Example (A Poem About Cierra):

This girl is an outsider, just like me
But that doesn't mean she has no English glee
She takes the course with such ambition
Learning more about education is her mission

Let me tell you, this girl can write
I can see a future in publishing that's bright
She's an English major, with some psych
And she can answer questions so quick and catlike

I look to her when I am at all confused
And she answers my questions without leaving me bruised
She's kind, she's caring, and she's eager to learn
With her demeanor, your respect she earns

I don't know her at all outside of class
But I get excited when walking we pass
She puts me at ease, she won't let me get lost
And I'm pretty happy our paths have crossed.

I'm pretty sure she works in Cooper
Which in my book makes her quite the trouper
I know she reads a lot more than I
With her major, I understand why

She's pretty smart, I learn a lot from her
Even when the rest of the class feels like a blur
I'm guessing the subject of this you now know
But if you need a hint, she sits in my row.

Students' Opinions on Government

I think that politics are often an area where students feel they have no voice--they cannot vote, they are often accused of taking their parents' perspectives, and they are often told they do not understand the "real world" well enough to be able to form their own, valid opinion. As Kendrick discussed, what a way to show our students that we care, that we validate their opinions, and that we want to know what they think by inviting them to express themselves through their writings.

As touchy of a subject as politics is, I think this is one writing assignment that would either have to stay between the individual student and the teacher, or one that the teacher would have to ensure discussion versus arguments. I think that one of the quickest ways to get our students to sink back down into their shell is to have a peer chastise them for their beliefs in front of the class. For a writing assignment of this nature, we would have to ensure a loving community in the classroom, not a debate. I am not quite sure how we could validate such solidarity and compassion amidst high schoolers, but if we could figure it out, I think a classroom discussion about writings would be a powerful way to bring the classroom into students' interests and excitements. Do we not all like to feel heard and understood?

If I were to give a writing prompt to foster such discussion in my classroom, I think this is along the lines of what I would want to do:

The past election was one of the most hostile that we have seen. Think about the platforms that both candidates ran on, and choose the one issue that meant the most to you. What does the debate of this issue mean for you? How do you wish the issue was handled differently in the media and among society?

My Name

My name just came about because it was the name of the protagonist of a children’s book my mom was reading to my older sister, and Hayley pointed at the name “Ashley” and said “sister.” That’s how Ashley came to be.

However, my middle name has a little more meaning; it is my aunt’s name. When I was in middle school, I used to be ashamed of telling people my middle name. Why? I honestly do not know. But coming out of high school and into college, I wear my middle name like a badge of honor.

As I have gotten older, I have come to love my name more and more as I have been able to look at my aunt and admire her for who she is--a strong, single mother with a heart way more generous than her purse strings should allow. My aunt is the type of person who has always flown under the radar, never quite lived up to the precedent her older sister set, yet has found a way to be an impactful trail-blazer by the way she chooses to live her life. Having never been married, my aunt adopted my sister and me as her own kids. She is there for us like a sister, spoils us like a grandparent, and loves us as if she were our mother. My aunt is an advocate for the betterment of our family.

Even after she decided to adopt a little girl of her own, she has always proceeded with our family in mind, and she’s only brought the gap between generations in our family closer as she chose to give a stranger a forever family of her own.

I hope that I can live up to the name I have been given—a name picked by my family, after my family, and hopefully for my family.

Teaching For Everyone

My only real training with teaching was teaching English as a Foreign Language in Sofia, Bulgaria this past summer, so I do not feel the most qualified to offer teaching advice or suggestions just based off my inexperience with it. However, this past summer I did learn a lot about what it meant to connect with students who were the most different from me.

There is a lot of social and racial tension in our society today, and I think those tensions definitely transcend to the classroom. Whether or not a teacher finds himself personally racist, we will still have to fight the underlying tensions that fight against classroom unity.

For me this past summer, I was the odd-ball in the classroom. Here I was, a 20-year-old American girl, fresh off a plane hoping to be able to figure out English enough to teach it to a bunch of Bulgarians way older and way smarter than me (just smarter in a different language).

Removed from the norms of my own culture, I had to become a student of my students. Instead of simply being able to rattle off facts about English, throw in puns and funny comments to keep them engaged, or rely on my own instincts, I had to learn how they would best respond; the way I found they best responded was when I took a genuine interest in what they liked.

Teachers these days are confronted with all sorts of people who are different from them. For a lot of those kids that seem to be the farthest out, I think one of the only ways we will be able to impact them is to show a genuine interest in what it is they care about.

This past summer, I had to take a genuine interest in the Bulgarian language, in anime, in music, and in culinary endeavors. While those things aren't exactly what ignite passion inside of me, my interest in them ignited passion inside my students, and it gave me a voice to be listened to and respected in the classroom.

Social Justice in the Classroom

The picture above was used as an advertisement by End It Movement, a coalition of anti-human trafficking organizations that seeks to bring awareness to this ever-present problem in our society and across the world. Every year since 2013, End It Movement has picked a day in February for all those aware of the problem of human trafficking to raise awareness of the issue together by drawing a red "X" on their hands and being a voice in their community. 

The reason I love this picture, though, is because it displays that red "X" to bring awareness to this social justice issue, but it also depicts a somewhat reserved, possibly helpless person doing so.

I know that, when I was in high school, I would hear about these social justice issues, such as human trafficking or extreme poverty or hunger, and I would want to drop out of school and travel the world and fix as many of the problems as I could. In reality, what could I do as a 15 year old that would drastically change these issues? Nothing really, except raise the voice that I did have to those people in power. 

But if I'm going to raise my voice in awareness of social injustice, I better also be living justly where I am. So I began to open my eyes to the people needing a friend or a voice all around me. I saw the kid getting bullied while waiting for his mom to come pick him up, I saw the girl who always sat alone in the lunch room, and I saw the freshman who was struggling to pick up all the books she dropped in the stairwell during class change. I opened my eyes to mini injustices happening all around me, and that is what has prepared me best to fight the big ones I see now to the best of my ability.

I think the biggest thing we need to teach the kids in our classrooms is that our fight against social injustice does not start when we grow up and have enough money or enough power to make this huge change. Our fight against social justice begins right there in the classroom, looking out for the lost and lonely peers sitting all around us. If we are not going to take care of the neighbor right next to us, how can we expect to change the world?

Short Story: "The Things They Carried"

I have to be honest; I do not often find myself reading short stories for fun very often, and most of the time,  I disregard the texts that I have to read for class shortly thereafter. However, my senior year of high school, we read Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried, which is a collaboration of related short stories from O'Brien about his experience in the Vietnam War. 

For me, the most memorable short story from this collection was the very first, which also happened to be called "The Things They Carried." I remember reading this short story during my senior year and expecting that this book would be just like any other book I had ever been assigned for school--confusing, non-engaging, and nothing of the nature that I would want to read. However, I remember being drawn into the beginning of a story like never before, as I wanted to read all the more about the physical, mental, and emotional things our soldiers carry for us.

I had considered the emotional toll it would take on soldiers before, but I never considered it in the context of getting in the way of their work. I never considered that they would physically carry letters they had received in their backpack or that they would superstitiously hold onto a loved one’s garments. I never considered that their thoughts would so preoccupy them that they would find themselves removed from their work or removed from mourning the loss of one of their brothers on the front lines.

But perhaps the greatest benefit we reap from O'Brien mentioning the physical and emotional things is the development of the plot, the setting, and the characters in one great swoop. We understand their lives as soldiers, the necessity of the physical things they carry, and the things most important to the characters, which set up storylines for the short stories to follow. 

Essay Prompt: Imagine you are going backpacking. What would you pack? Be as descriptive as O'Brien in describing the things you would carry to unveil the plot, the setting, and a great character description.

http://savanna.auhsd.us/view/26051.pdf

Childhood Narrative - The Day I Began to Treasure Water

It seems like I never get a Saturday to myself. The weekend is supposed to be fun, right? Apparently, my parents think that “fun” is a forced family outing to support my ever-favored older sister in all her athletic endeavors. This particular Saturday was no different, except this basketball tournament had to take place in a non-air-conditioned, non-ventilated gymnasium light-years away from where we lived.

“Time to go! Come on, we’re gonna be late! You’re just gonna have to eat your breakfast in the car”—those phrases plagued my childhood, and the weekends did not bring any relief from the rush to get to the next place.

As I sat with my granola bar and chocolate milk in the backseat of that white, rickety Chrysler minivan, I steamed hotter than a teakettle left unattended that yet another Saturday was being stripped from me for Hayley to play basketball.

We sat and watched two games, got a quick lunch break, and then had to sit through two more games.

My eight-year-old self could not handle the utter boredom, hunger, and stir-craziness.

“Dad, can I have $2 to go get a water,” I asked, hoping to kill at least a little bit of time waiting at the concession stand.

He gave me the money and off I went.

The only problem is I really hate water. It’s bland, it’s boring, and it tastes a whole lot like backwash to me.

So I really didn’t drink it, which irritated my dad to no end that I would blow his money on a Dasani with no intention of drinking it.

“Give the rest to Hayley after the game,” he finally ordered me as he watched that I had barely made any progress by halftime of the fourth game of the day.

But I loathed Hayley. She had been ruining my weekends for every Saturday for the past eight years. Why reward her (or thank her) by giving her a cold bottle of water? That would be far too nice of me.

The fourth game finally ended, and we were ready to make the trek back to Atlanta as soon as Hayley’s coach stopped talking and debriefing the game with all his players. While we were waiting, I once again walked out to get a change of scenery.

Like an unexpected treasure, I saw it—the trashcan. I walked on over there and threw out the rest of that Dasani. Sweet revenge; she’ll be thirsty now and at least suffer a little bit like I do for her every weekend.

Coach Jeff finally finished his debriefing, and our family made our way back to the minivan.

“Can we stop for a drink?” Hayley asked, only for my dad to tell her I had a water for her.

“I threw it away,” I declared, a little more proudly than I should have.

And then I saw it, the part of my dad that scared me the most. His neck got red, his voice got deeper, and his voice was a little more emphatic than normal as he asked, “Did you finish it?”

Oh crap. This is not good.

I’m the world’s worst liar, so I knew I was too far into this to get out successfully. I told him the truth--that I threw it away because I didn’t want Hayley to get it.

What followed that confession was what felt like the world’s longest car ride, hardest spanking, and lengthiest spell of shame.

Never again will I throw a water bottle away before it is completely empty.