Final
Throughout the year, I have grown to be more confident, reflective, independent and academic. I have also become better Academic Achiever and Effective Communicator. I have achieved these growths from what I have learned different skills from several completions of work we did in the year. We began this year with a book called Lord of the Flies and put an end to a long road of English eight with one of the best masterpieces written by William Shakespeare, The Tempest. As a class, we discussed our thoughts and ideas to answer unanswerable questions all the way to the end of the road. We asked ourselves questions such as, ‘What is human nature?’. This year, we also had several projects, both independent and collaborative, such as the poetry book and the pod cast of The Tempest. English was not the only class we had with Mr. Raisdana in which I grew; we also had a quarter of Drama as an eighth grade exploratory. From this essay you are about to read, you would be able to distinguish my personal growth as a result of the work I completed in English and Drama classes plus my growth in the ESLRs.
First of all, I have learned to be more confident, thanks to the Drama class I took in the second quarter when I had to make reflections of the four emotions: happiness, anger, sorrow, and surprise. This was a very great progress for me, because (as you will find out later) this improvement helped me achieve many other growths. In the beginning of the second quarter, I was ashamed and embarrassed of myself, and I wanted to hide behind someone when I had to stand in front of the class and do ‘some stupid things’. However, by the end of the quarter when I performed in front of other students, I found myself crawling out of my comfort zone. During the English class, I have also learned to be reflective. In the very beginning of eighth grade when Mr. Raisdana told us to write a 1000-word reflective journal about the Lord of the Flies, I freaked out and started to moan. However, by the end of the Poetry Unit, I started to enjoy writing reflective journals, having to write the reflective journal for the third time. I am now being critical and reflective on everything I do; from the notes I took to the things I have done in the party. Because I could reach the other world outside my comfort zone and raise my low self-esteem, and because I was able to become more reflective on everything I do, I was finally able to become more independent. I started this year being dependent on my friends, and at the end, I crawled out of the ‘outer me’ and found my strengths. I think that being independent is the most important thing to learn in school life, because you wouldn’t do well on the essays you need to write in the future by yourself. Lastly, I have learned to be more academic throughout this year; I have learned how to use the mixture of old and new information, how to use technology as a tool for better completion of projects, more responsibility, and to adjust and evaluate myself. This academic growth leads to my ESLR-based achievements.
As an Academic Achiever, I grew to be able to demonstrate technological literacy and the use of technology as a tool for the efficient and creative completion of a project. In the very beginning of the year, I simply LOATHED technology. Yes, this is because I was technologically challenged, thank you very much. However, by the middle of the year, I started to think, ‘Hmm. It isn’t THAT bad’. This thought changed my point of view on technology, and in fact, it helped me to do complete several projects such as Anne Frank commercial movie, Teen Life project, and The Tempest pod cast. This improvement is very closely related to one of my personal growths, confidence. The reason to this is because when I learned to be more confident in myself, I also started to challenge myself to my weaknesses. I think this growth was immense and very important, because I, finally in eighth grade, learned how to live in the 21st century of technology.
The second ESLR that I achieved throughout the year is Effective Communicator. As for an Effective Communicator, I demonstrated awareness of the role of audience. There are two sources in which I was able to achieve this growth: Drama performance and the Poetry unit (and the night). I believe that this growth is immense, as it reflects my personal growths: confidence, independence and academics. In the very beginning of the drama performance and the Poetry unit, I avoided any kinds of eye contact with the audience. I simply wanted to stop them from staring at me, I wanted the time to stop, I wanted to finish fast; I was embarrassed. However, by walking along the ‘road of confidence’, I was able to challenge myself on this weakness. Therefore, by the end of the quarter (unit), I started to talk louder, and seldom made eye contacts. However, despite the confidence I feel deep inside my heart, despite the ‘inner me’ reminding me not to be afraid, embarrassed and nervous, I often think that I look ‘stupid’ whenever I am standing in front of people.
As a result, I feel very proud of what I managed to achieve throughout the eighth grade. Looking back, I think I have done amazing job, as I know that my growths in many areas like Effective Communicator and confidence, were very challengeable. However, I think I could have done even better job as an Academic Achiever by assessing information from a variety of sources. I could have been able to do this by making references to the book or other appropriate websites while working on the projects. Another area in which I could have done a better job is the six traits. Although I learned many skills this year in terms of the traits, I feel that I am not quite used to the traits, especially word choice and conventions.
