sparkle shoes

Christine Newville

Post Reflection Assignment

Educational autobiography

Table of Contents

Chapter 1. Being a nature child

Chapter 2. Placitas Elementary

Chapter 3. Permaculture and long division

Chapter 4.  A Blur of middle school

Chapter 5. Club Ed

Chapter 6.  Explora

Chapter 7. Mr. Curry and Physics disasters

Chapter 8. South America 

Chapter 9. Parents know best

Chapter 10.  BMC

Chapter 6.

            Imagine being forced to do community service. This community service can be anything you want it to be, you could volunteer in a homeless shelter, collect jackets for the winter, making trail-paths in the mountains, reading in hospitals, it could be anything. Imagine the gratification of being able to choose what you do, when you do it and organizing this project all by yourself.

            Now imagine telling your friends about your project and the details you worked out, the meetings and emails you sent out, being proud of yourself. Next, imagine your friend tell you she lied about hers and faked a signature, then your other friend next to her giving her a high fiving and saying he “just picked up some trash” in a park for 5 minutes.  That was the moment when I felt out of love with my education.

January 30, 2013

Table of Contents

Chapter 1- Summer Camps

Chapter 2- Teacher’s Pet and its Stigmas

Chapter 3- My Parents’ Emphasis on School

Chapter 4- Realizing that I Wanted to Be at School

Chapter 5- “Mom, Dad, Why Aren’t I in Public School?”

Chapter 6- Dialogue on Race

Chapter 7- Obsessive College Applications

Chapter 8- Higher Standards and For the Right Reasons

I don’t think I ever really understood why everyone was so excited when school let out. Ever since I can remember, I haven’t been able to do nothing with my summers. This feeling started with my parents putting me in academic-minded and engaging summer camps while they went to work. I was always busy with many different types of these camps, but the experiences to which they lent themselves made me a better student and harvested my childish curiosity. In Dewey’s terms, the experience of the summer camps offered me a continuity of experience so that I wouldn’t ever really stop the whole learning process, nor have to code switch between a more lax summer code of conduct and schedule and a more rigorous, strict school year schedule.