Reflection On Choices and Experiences

Julie Leal

Having choices rather than assigned a specific thing to do or book to read helped my experience in English class. It was something positive for the class. Usually, we are given assigned books/ projects in our English classes which made reading for me more difficult. Choosing something to do on my own allowed me to be more creative, something that I'm usually not.

I enjoyed reading in English on two occasions. The first is when we read "Laughter In The Dark" and the second is when I read "Still Alice" as my independent reading book. "Laughter In The Dark" was an interesting book that made me want to keep reading. "Still Alice" was a book that I have been wanting to read in a long time but never got the chance due to not having enough time. I enjoyed reading these books and that made classes more enjoyable.

This year I think I read a lot more than in the past years. This is because we had many books being read at the same time. We had the in class books, our Friday book journal books, and our book club book. As stressful as it was to be able to juggle all these books in our brains it was very helpful with multitasking skills and to prepare us for all the books we will be reading at once in college. Having so many books to read in class and being mostly interested in all of them motivated me to read more at home. 


I feel that none of my writing was truly authentic. I didn't put my full potential into my work and this made it so it wasn't authentic because it wasn't a true representation of my potential in writing. Personally, I feel that I could've done a lot better.

I feel that I was able to have some control over my own learning in class this year. I feel this way because we were given the freedom to choose our own books and projects. You also took feedback from us with everything we did with discussions and surveys which helped enhance our learning experience. An activity that I think went really well was the independent reading books. This is because it gave students like me a chance to read a book that they might have been interested in or have been wanting to read but never got around to it. It also gave us the chance to discover what type/genre of literature we like because we could change our book anytime if we didn't like them.


With everything we did this year, I feel that there was nothing you could have done to enhance my experience in English. You did things no other teachers have done like give us the freedom to choose books and projects and also be able to read a good amount of books in just one school year. I feel as if you helped prepare us for college more than any of my English teachers have before. Thank you for making English enjoyable this year!