2016 English Reflection

Joey Dalicandro
Mrs.Black/ English
A-block



                 My senior English experience has been one of mixed emotion and feelings to say the least. Well for starters, this class was the first honors class I have taken in all my four years here. So simply put I was nervous. I was intimidated from the start of the very first class. I didn't know what to think or what to expect. All I knew was it would be different from what I was used to, and I was right.

               Choice. That was the major theme of this year. This is an idea that's new to me, and one that I had trouble adjusting to at first. Being a student that's been going through the Waltham Public school system for my whole life,  and I can honestly say I've never had this much freedom to make my own choices. Be that as it may I found myself struggling with this. I was so use to be being told what to write and how to write that It took awhile to break me out of this so called "spell" that I was in. We were taught ever since a young age to write in a particular formulaic way , this is what made it hard for me to write  once choice was presented to us. After a few months of class I still found myself still having issues with this, but by the time the year began to end ( like the past month or two ) I found myself getting more and more used to it. Though choice projects were getting to me, I found myself liking the whole idea of us choosing our own reading books. This I think, was a good way to get us more engaged in reading. Personally I am not much of a reader I must admit, but simply having a choice on what book to read actually made reading a much better experience for me. And believe it or not I actually found myself reading at home, which if you knew me , is pretty hard to believe. It's not like I hate reading or anything it's just I hate reading what teachers tell me to read. I enjoy biographies, I'm not one for sci-fi or fantasy. This why reading became more enjoyable, cause we got to read books that actually interest us. This is a pivotal reason for why I found myself reading more than the years in the past. Though not much, I did indeed read outside of school. Mostly when a blog was due but that's beside the point. Oh and speaking of reading, I actually liked reading every Friday. It was a nice and relaxing way to begin our Fridays, I used it as my time to unwind. I believe it would be a great thing to do next year with the class of '18. It is in my personal opinion that all Friday classes should begin with something like this.

           When it comes to writing, I think that everything went well this year. Most of our essays were a choice that we ourselves had to make, an aspect of this year I liked.  I believe writing is more authentic when we get to chose the topic. As students we tend to not follow directions well so us having a choice of either writing an essay or doing a creative work of our own. I also think that our advising experience was as close to authentic as possible. Be that as it may there were more than a few times we peer edited that didn't end up working in my favor. But the experience, though not entirely helpful, did feel very close to authentic. Why? Because we had close to all the control over our own writing and projects. And it doesn't get more real and authentic than that!!
        Though we did have control over what we learned in class, I don't believe I had a favorite project or topic. On contrary to that I didn't really have a favorite book either. In matter of fact, and to answer this honestly , I didn't really like any of the books at all. For starters I highly dislike Shakespeare. And I wasn't necessarily a fan of Laughter in the Dark either. Oh and I forget the first Story we read but I didn't really enjoy that either. Also I wasn't necessarily into my reading group book either. I picked it only cause It seemed less worse than the other options. In my opinion, for next year, you should let students bring in their own book. Like our independent reading! Oh and while I'm on the topic of suggestions I may have a few. Well to start I think you should cut back on the public speaking aspect of your lesson plan. I'm not alone when I say I hate presenting infront of the class. And I think its only fear that those few students out there like me should be aloud to opt out of that. Throughout the year I got many points taken away from me  simply cause I didn't present in front of my fellow peers. I don't believe that is fair at all. Also another suggestion I'll make for next year is that we shouldn't read as many books at once, like we did this year. I found myself overwhelmed at many points this year. Too much confusion stems from that. Well at least for me.