Personal statment (extra credit)

Shaleena Campbell

                                                       3^rd Draft

Starting in the ninth grade I started tutoring a second grader named Bryanna Gomez, a little girl who lived in the apartment next to me. Prior to tutoring her, I had never talked, let alone seen her or her family in my building before. So it was surprising when her mother asked me to help her out. In the back of my mind I was unsure of ability to help another human being with their homework. I was worried because I was not the kid in the class who had all the answer, the person who even passed test with a high grade. Despite the my average school work I decided to tutor her for two years straight every other day of my ninth and tenth grades school year.

The routine for me every day was go to school, then to Harlem Children Zone, and then at six go to her house to tutor her. Walking into her home, I was always emerged in a blast of heat and the look of appetizing food that was always being cooked. Day after day we would sit on her couch doing her HW; she had the basics reading, writing, and math but you couldn’t tell her that she acted a like her teacher gave her pre-calculus math homework instead of second grade math. It would be agitating at times because her parent’s barely spoke English and it was difficult for me to communicate with her parents about things she was having trouble with. Not being able to communicate

played a big part because information would get mixed, up but by the time I was finished working with her I solved our communication problem with patience. 

During this time, I had a lot to do between juggling HW and extracurricular activities. I considered quitting, but I couldn’t because if I was to it would eat me up inside until I felt bad enough to start tutoring her again. So I stuck with it and made a plan to start doing my homework before I tutored her so that when I got home I would have time to relax. My plan work and I was able to get my HW done and it no longer was a problem.

At the end of the school year, Bryanna took her state test and she failed. I felt horrible because I considered it to be my fault because I was the one helping her with her school work and I didn’t realize she was having that much of a problem. I talked to her teacher and found out that Bryanna only answered six questions in the whole entire test and was getting left back in the second grade. I thought that her mom was going to fire me. I was so scared that I avoided talking to her for a few days, but she understood that I can’t be there to take the test with her. It was up to Bryanna to use what she learns with me on her school work. After finding out she was getting left back, I decided to reevaluate the way I was tutoring, I wouldn’t let this set me and Bryanna back. I found ways to efficiently tutor her during the summer by using the recourses around me to find worksheets and flashcards to further help her.

Experiencing this failure with Bryanna taught me to revaluate problems and figure out ways to fix them. When Bryanna failed I avoided the situation but I’ve learned not to do that because it would not benefit me or her. That I should tackle problems head on to overcome it. Also taught me how to juggle different things I have to do and that has come in handy numerous time this year with my school work and my job.

Class response

In class we are reading the a book called Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. So far I know it's about a person named Guy

(I'm not sure if that's his name) who is a fireman and in this book instead of putting out fires he starts them. His job is to start fires with banned books because the books give people ideas of rebellion and things of that nature. With the class I've read maybe 13 pages and in the 13 pages the character guy meets a this teenager who has him reevaluating his thinks feeling and thoughts. The girl he meets thinks outside of the ideas given to her to think about. So far from the story it seems like she likes to read books and her and the main character will go through some type experience because she likes to read books. In the book there is a qoute that says something like if they give you ruled paper right the other way. I think that the girl he meet is an example of that qoute. Also in the book the main character guy comes home to his wife trying to kill herself. I thought this was intresting and I wanted o find out why she was killing herself but unfortunately I have not read past that part. So far I like the book it's not to boring I look forward to the end of the book to see what happens. 

Another Introduction

My name is Shaleena Campbell I'm a 16 year old senior at Thurgood Marshall Academy. I've been going to Thurgood Marshall for seven years and I am happy that this is my last year having to enter a first day of school here. My Journey to 12th grade put a strain on my grades which has led to some of my stress in my senior year. Its weird for me to say stressed because I'm a really laid back, care-free person and this pass summer and few weeks of school have taken me out of my nonchalance. So far this school year has just been college talk, so much to the point where I feel drowned in college admissions and GPA's. I come to school, go to after school, and then go home and the word college is drilled into my brain. When I go home the last thing I want to think about is College, but having a mother who is really up on things makes it hard for me to forget. At times I feel overwhelmed because where going over all this college stuff and often my grades don't match the criteria. I get over this by trying to encourage myself to do better and try to get my grades up a little. Its only the first three weeks a school and I've already been bombarded with two essays, a presentation, and a test. Knowing that I want to bring my GPA up I wholeheartedly did all that work on time, and due to my hard work I got an 100 on the first statistics test this year which really brought my spirits up. It wasn't long before those spirits dropped and the next day I had a bad day at work. I'm not going to get into explaining it now because that will be another blog post. See you every other Wednesday.

Free write

So I'm in class and the teacher is not here. I am so bored usually I am bored in this class but at least I'm bored and learning but right now I'm just bored. Next period I have Ms.Hegeman and were watching breaking bad. Were watching breaking bad because were trying to see how a person changes when there in dire situations. The aim for that day was would you change your morals?. I answered yes under the certain circumstances i would change my morals to save my life.Breaking bad is about this chemistry teacher who finds out he has cancer. The main character Walter( I'm not sure of what his name is ) has a boring life and he is struggling to make ends so he wants to wants to sell drugs in order to make sure his family is stable after he dies. Before this class I did watch this show but i did not continue to watch it because it gave me anxiety, like I didn't now wither they were going to succeed or fail. A lot of people seem to really like this show and encourage me to watch it. The show comes on the same network that the walking dead comes on AMC. In class I hope we continue to watch breaking bad because I do not want to read  the book that were reading.

(Class post) Theater

Theater-

So in theater class we are doing performances. In my group there is Teanna, Nyla, and me. We are doing the movie mean girls and were taking sections from the movie and making it into a complication of random scenes. We have to wear costumes and bring props so that our skits looks really good.We have been practicing since winter break and I think were prepared for the performances. I have to bring a flannel shirt, some butt pads, and bars to help with the skit.we have to preform today and i'm not really nervous . Ms. Gilpin is teaching this class I made a blog about this class earlier and stated that I don't like the class. I think that she makes us do too much for an elective class when I have other classes to do work for. Every class gave us a project this week so I'm not really trying to do it but I have to to get a good grade. I wanted to do mean girls because I really love that movie . I wish school was like this movie because then school would be fun and and funny. We preform today and i think were going to do good.

Class Post (Anatomy)

In anatomy class we are doing a class project. This project calls for me having a partner and me an that partner have to make a 10 minute presentation and a 4 page essay. The partner I choose was Leslie Espinal, I choose her because I always work with her on things so I thought it would be effective for me to work with her. On Tuesday the first part of the outline is due which is the outline. The body system we got was the muscular system and to me that's relatively essay so I'm happy that we got assigned it. Leslie and I have been working everyday on getting our work done because I don't want to be unprepared for the project. In Ms Lall's class i have around an 80% something so if I don't do the project I will fail and that cant happen because I've been trying to keep my grades up so that I have a high average when I get my report card. So far the project has been going good and there has been no problems with understanding the work.While we were typing the outline Leslie deleted it and we were so scared that we had to rewrite what we typed but lucky we got it back so now were both happy. I am glad that I worked with Leslie because we work well with each other and I'm positive that we will have a great presentation and essay. So now I'm logging off because the bell has rung so bye.                                                                   

Class post

Night School 

      So I've been taking a night school class. I am taking the class because I am missing half a credit and I want to graduate on time.The class is Spanish and we have a brand new teacher named Ms. Gonzalez, she is from bread and roses and she teaches Spanish U.S history and some other things. I enjoy having her even though she's going to be hard to past because I'm so used to Ms. Sawchuck. Having Ms. Sawchuck was easy because we had relatively the same lesson plans and the same HW every year. Ms. Gozalez is like a breath of fresh air compared to Ms.Sawchuck. We just recently got a project about mesoamerica and we had to identify the different parts of Maya life.We got to choose are partners I worked with Fatoumanta, Nyla ,Zina,and Aisha. we work well together i guess even though we just meet ayisha we all seem to be able to do our part. My part was to help make the power point and to look up the environment/geography of meso-america.I am glad that I don't have to go to summer school for Spanish. Its just the frist 2 weeks of having this class so i really dont know how it will turn out but hopefully i'll pass and get my needed credits.