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Elan Brown Professor Collin Ludlow-Mattson English 114 First Year Composition 3 October 2013 Reflective Cover Letter The point of this literacy essay was to explain a time in my life where I had to deal with language in making my reading and writing better. What I wanted to accomplish was to show how sometimes it is necessary to take charge of things in order to get something done or reach a goal. I do believe that I accomplished this; I discussed in the essay how I would go out and teach myself things that I wasnt learning in the classroom. I also wanted to explain the effect a good book can have on you; I did this by describing some of the books I had read throughout that year and what I had thought of them. I dont think I learn anything new on how to get ideas across to the reader during this process. My opinion about what I have written in the essay hasnt changed since I began writing. I still believe that you cant always rely on others. If you dont agree with something being done than you should attempt to do it yourself. In the essay I also described a few books Ive read, and my thoughts of one of them have changed, as I noted in that section. My opinion on my past English teacher remains the same. If you dont enjoy doing something you should quit doing it because you may be making others suffer and the people suffering, although they may not have cared, were his students.

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English with Mr. Rodriguez I dont exactly like to write and only enjoy reading when its a book that is not assigned to me for work so I usually dont enjoy English but I do like to learn. My experience with past English teachers hasnt always been the best, and unfortunately I have ended up having mostly horrible teachers rather than good ones. Dealing with a horrible teacher can be very frustrating, especially for someone who actually enjoys learning. Although Mr. Rodriguez was one of the worst teachers I have had, he motivated me to go out and teach myself the things he wasnt able to. The worst teacher Ive had was in my freshmen year of high school with my English teacher Mr. Rodriguez. It was probably his sixth year of teaching, and he wasnt very good at it. Every time he walked into class he had an attitude that read, I really dont want to be here. Everyone leave me alone. I hate my job. He spent the majority of class time on his computer while his students sat around, socialized, and trashed the room. He didnt know how to properly control the class, so on the rare occasions that he would get up and attempt to instruct the class, no one would stop to listen to him. It also didnt help that for most of the school year he was nowhere to be seen, we had many substitutes and those were the only times the class was quiet due to there being a movie playing. His method of teaching involved handing out packets of English worksheets, and they were simple circle or underline the helping verb or adjective instructions so he never taught us much. Going into high school I expected to be assigned an essay to write each week and a new book to read each month however, this was not how it was going to be with his class. I was excited at first, happy that nothing would be expected of me during the two hours of being there.

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However, I was soon saddened by the fact that getting a free pass in English also meant that I wasnt learning anything. I realized that his lack of teaching was holding me back. While we were in his class socializing other classes were learning proper grammar, reading poetry, and being assigned books to read. Missing out on a year of English would have put me at a disadvantage in the following year of English to people who had teachers that actually taught their subjects properly. I was frustrated with my class, so I decided to start doing things for myself. Some days I would go home and look up the various prefixes and suffixes to get a better understanding of words. I would make flashcards of these to help myself memorize all of the meanings. This helped me so whenever I encountered a word I didnt fully understand I was able to guess at what its definition was based on their prefix or suffix. In addition to this, I would look up literary terms for myself to put into use when writing or notice them being used when reading. I learned about the references of allusions, the tone a story can have, the use of figurative language, dramatic hyperboles and the different types of irony. I also had school books that I would put to use. I would go through the grammar book to read up on things I didnt understand and read the short stories in the thicker book that our class had checked out. Much like Sherman Alexies Superman and Me, I started reading more and also started applying what I had learned to my reading. I began reading more notable books. I had always enjoyed reading, but they were usually books that were fairly easy to understand. I started to challenge myself in reading and began picking up books such as Fahrenheit 451, The Scarlet Letter, and The Hobbit. I remember being disappointed while reading The Scarlet Letter; I couldnt understand why it was such a renowned book. I didnt find it very exciting and was happy to be done with it, although looking back I realized that the story did have a good meaning

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to it. The Hobbit was more engaging than the books I had read in the past, it was an exciting page turner that I wasnt able to put down. Fahrenheit 451 had the same engaging story and while I was reading these books I was also putting what I had taught myself to work. These books were more interesting than The Scarlet Letter because I found their stories to be more adventurous and ending up caring about the characters especially with Fahrenheit 451. When I was reading these books I noticed the different literacy items being used such as foreshadowing, irony, allusions, and symbolism in the stories. Taking time to learn about prefixes and suffixes helped me in understanding the books as well, especially while reading The Scarlet Letter. I also enjoyed reading plays and poetry and mainly enjoyed the work of William Shakespeare. The first play I had read from him was Julius Caesar. I appreciated reading Shakespeares plays because I loved reading about tragedies. I learned about the structures of plays and how powerful a monologue could be. Poetry was also enjoyable to read but some pieces were hard to understand. I memorized the different types of poems such as sonnets, ballads, blank verses, and elegies. I always found poetry difficult to understand because it seemed as though some authors wanted there to be meaning behind every word in there poem while other ones had no meaning at all. Poetry was also hard because of the different structure that came with each form. I was happy that I had decided to teach myself for that time because the class continued to do nothing for the rest of the year. The only assignments we had were those easy English packets and the only tests we did were assessments that the district required us to take. Further into the year I hated going to his class, I was annoyed that he rarely got up or looked away from his computer. If I hadnt taken the initiative to educate myself for the year I would not have been prepared for the following year of English where I was ahead of the class. I had already read

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some of the books being assigned for that year and wasnt as confused when we got to the poetry sections. This experience was important to me because during this time I learned to do things on my own such as teaching myself different areas of English. My English class was basically a social hour for everyone. We werent expected to write, and we werent assigned any books to read for the entire academic year. Back then I thought that I was a bit of a loser for doing what I was doing, taking time out of my day to learn and sometimes not spending time with friends because I was so engulfed in a book that I couldnt wait to get home to finish reading. No one had taken the time to do what I had done. Now that I look back at what I did I am proud of myself for doing it. I was able to get a better understanding of words, literary devices and discovered some of my favorite books. This experience had changed my view of learning by teaching me how crucial it is. Education is a very important thing that shouldnt be taken for granted. I have had some teachers who dont care to truly teach the subject which is unfortunate, especially for major subjects such as science, English or math. The lesson I take from my experience is that if something isnt going right then take charge and do it yourself.