Education Through the Years

Education is a wonderful thing. It shapes the way people learn and what they learn. I myself have had several different experiences with schooling every since I was three. My schooling started out at Head Start in New Castle County, Delaware. At the time, my mother had been living with a friend of the family who worked at Head Start. She thought it would be a good idea for me to get an early start with working with other children. Whenever I would come home, my mother would have additional work for me to do that she had come up with herself and there was always a mandatory Reading Hour that normally went on for much longer than an hour.

Of course, since Head Start is only for children ages three to five (without any restrictions on birthdays as most public schools have), I entered public school at age six, attending Booker T. Washington Elementary school. The teacher I had was a bit innovative. We learned how to make our own peanut butter, the anatomy of insects through microscopes and other such projects to keep us engaged. Aside from the anatomy of insects project (which scarred me for life), everything worked in my memory. I didn't realize until years later that, because I was actually doing hands-on work, I was learning it easier.

However, after my grandmother's death, my family began moving around a lot more. Between Kansas, California and Delaware depending on which side of the family wanted my mother back with them (for whatever reason). I spent second, fifth and seventh through tenth grade in Kansas, third, sixth, eleventh and twelfth grade in Delaware and fourth grade was split between California and Kansas.

Each school was different in its own way. Benjamin Banneker Elementary, which I attended in second grade and Mark Twain Elementary where I went for the second half of my fourth grade year, were very big into reading. Benjamin Banneker had mandatory reading time for all students and there were short reports that had to be written on each book. Mark Twain took it a step further by having little groups and each group read a certain book while filling out paperwork to share with their group each day on what they had read. Because of all the emphasis on reading, it further solidified my interests in books and--don't laugh--where they came from.

There were also experiences I had that were unique to specific schools. At Bella Vista Elementary in California, it was a different type of learning because I had to simultaneously learn Spanish since some of the other children in my class (and the school as a whole) didn't speak English very well yet. So, it was somewhat of a cultural distance between us with me learning Spanish from my mother (flashcards, tutorials, other Spanish native speakers) and them learning English in school. It's one of the reasons I chose to learn Spanish in high school rather than French. French, I found, was a bit more difficult than Spanish due to it not being completely phonetic whereas most of the Spanish language is phonetic and thereby easier to pronounce.

Speaking of experiences, during my eighth, ninth and tenth grade years, I needed to attend two different schools. The first, Sumner Academy of Arts and Sciences in Kansas, was my primary school where I learned the basic necessities such as typing, math, English, History and computer programming (nothing too intense, just how to work Microsoft processing). The other, the Kansas State School for the Blind which was right down the street, was the school I needed to attend in order to receive visual assistance from teachers and counsellors who were trained to work with students with disabilities. It provided computer software to enlarge papers, computer monitors, handheld magnifiers to held me study for tests, etc.

So that was a different experience. Oddly enough, though Sumner was called for its Art and Science programs, those seemed to be well-balanced with the sports and education. Sumner is known for being one of the top International Baccalaureate schools in the country because students can take any of the IB classes and the only mandatory IB class is English. Because of this, students have a well-rounded sense of how to do their work rather than just simple memorization. Students need to learn how to analyze the work and go beyond the bare minimum in order to achieve passing grades in the classes.

 

This I didn't realize until I entered eleventh grade at John Dickinson High in Delaware. Dickinson, before I attended, had a bad reputation and were struggling to even keep their doors open. The year I moved back to Delaware (2012), they had just announced that they were adapting to the International Baccalaureate programme, but due to needing the program to be a success, any student that enrolled in the programme had to take all of the classes (opposed to Sumner which had been long adapted to the program and no longer required all of their students to take every IB class). Had I not enrolled in the full programme, I would have been graduated out at sixteen, so I decided to take up the challenge.

The IB programme is a rigorous program in which students are made to think outside of the box instead of molded to follow one specific instruction. By doing this, I discovered that there were more opportunities out in the world for me than just writing (despite writing remaining my number one goal). Being able to explore myself with the different projects and being able to find my own median between learning styles as I needed a different learning style for each class since they were all taught differently opened my eyes to how flexible I needed to be out in the actual world.

I will admit that I did not get the diploma (I wasn't trying for the diploma to begin with, so it didn't hamper me too much to have not received it), but I left that school on graduation day understanding myself more and understanding the world a bit better than when I entered high school. I know I can't do everything one way and attending a liberal arts college is the best way for me to hone my skills to continue being well-rounded.

So, my education wasn't necessarily normal, but contrary to what Dickinson may think, I came out quite well-rounded. Not just because of the learning strategies I endured, but also because of the different experiences I had that I would not have had had I not moved around so many times throughout my life.