Gaining Independence
During my senior year of high school my love for books was destroyed. There was no hope for my love of reading and writing to come back after Ms. Lefrancios, my senior year English teacher harshly criticized me. Senior year was alone was filled with mix emotions and memories. There was my last homecoming, my last track season, college applications, AP bio, calculus and coming to the conclusion that I have to become an independent student. Even with all of these complicated situations nothing was as hard as forcing myself to get the courage to survive a class with Ms. Lefrancios where I thought I would be left hopeless and lost. However, I was wrong. I learned more than I thought I would in the end.
While I was in elementary school my mom and my dad worked days, so after school I went to my grandparent’s house. As my grandpa drove he would be driving focusing on the road as he drove a standard, while my brother would sit in the middle and I would sit by the window and daze. After about ten minutes we would begin to drive up the hill. At the top of the hill was their house, also referred to as a mansion. It was a very sophisticated house built from their own creativity. When you walk through the tall, painted window doors you instantly feel like you are at Harvard. Straight ahead was their reading room, tall book shelves filled with various books, and the floor was covered by valuable furniture, that each had its own story. Right when we walked in my grandpa would have cookies and chocolate milk waiting for us. We had our snacks while finishing our homework. Around the time we finished our homework my grandma would be home which implied it was reading time. She would make a pot of hot roast coffee. She would have a cup of coffee with cream only and I would have a cup of milk with a shot of coffee. As I read in the reading room I felt safe simply because I would get so lost in the book that nothing else would bother me. I would continue to read until my mom arrived.
On the way home my mom and I would talk about my day at school, and talk about how my reading went. I loved to express my love for books with my mom because she would always listen to my questions, and help me figure out the answers. Although our conversations would usually get interrupted by reaching our destination of home and having to sit down at the dinner table. We would have a family conversation about every one’s day and then concluded dinner with a family activity. Every night before bed my mom would talk to me about stories she read when she was a kid. After she told me a summary I would then have the task to dream about my own version of the story which usually happened. I stopped being able to dream of my own story when my mom told me this one story. This story was different than all the others, a romantic tragedy. There was this girl head over heels for her boyfriend. Unfortunately, her boyfriend wasn’t head over heels for her considering he cheated on her. My mom started to choke up and kissed me on the forehead then left the room. Suddenly there was no more dreams and that night ended with a nightmare.
A month or so later my parents filed a divorce. Things became busier, my mom was now a single parent. She had to cook, clean, and maintain a full time job all by herself. There wasn’t much of conversation at dinner anymore because we all ate at different times. My mom would have to work at home, during the night to catch up on things she didn’t get to do in the office. There weren’t anymore bedtime stories which I understood. I was advancing in school at this time I was in seventh grade which meant my papers started to need second opinions. I trusted my mom the most to look over my papers, and revise them. It was her way of helping me, instead of reading to me she would help with my writing instead. It would be much easier to email her my paper then her revise it while she was free, rather than her finding time to read with me.
When I entered high school I enjoyed english class a lot especially with Mr. Kehowski as my teacher. He was the most down to earth guy. His class was easy going and stress free. He made his lessons fun and enjoyable with plenty of explanation on every reading we did. It was almost like having my mom as an english teacher. He would break the reading down how she use to paragraph by paragraph. They would both bring in real life example of things that were going on throughout the reading.
I started to become more self engaged in reading and writing until Ms. Lefrancios entered my academic life senior year of high school. She seemed like a nice, young, hip teacher until she started to talk. Her voice had that annoying pitch to it where it made her seem like she was one of those mean popular girls. Her intimating personality was so aggressive that she was the first teacher ever to make me get so upset to the point I would cry. In November we had our first paper due, it was on a piece of old literature we read in class. Throughout the reading I asked for a summarization of what they were saying. She always rolled her eyes and moan, or give off some other unprofessional gesture. She would make a scene in front of the class to embarrass me to the point where I would eventually just sit back down and figure it out on spark notes. When the paper was due I didn’t even bother to ask for help. Within the next week she told me to stay after class, where she then verbally ripped my paper apart because it was apparently the worst paper that she read. Once again I begin to feel the same hopelessness and confusion as I did after the divorce. I did that paper all by myself because I knew she wouldn’t have helped me if I asked, nor did I have my mom to help me with the content. My mom was always too busy to sit down and read a chapter with me. It wasn’t as quick as editing a couple pages of a paper for me.
After class I went to my savior Mr. Kehowski. I would always be able to count on him to put a smile on my face. I would always walk into class with him saying “Manuels, what’s up”, while he was downing his fifth cup of coffee. I would then catch his smile and see his perfectly straight teeth that had a slight coffee stain from his addiction. This time I entered his room crying. He was no longer smiling after I told him what happened. He explained to me that I was not the only student that was affected by her unprofessional personality. Mr. Kehowski continued to help me with the subject matter. He taught the same class so he would just have me come after school and he would help me with anything I needed.
When I thought things couldn’t get any worse, they did. We started to work on our English final known as a capstone. One day we were working on them in class. I had a question about my format and thesis. I walked up to her where she was sitting next to the librarian. I asked my question about my paper and she didn’t even make eye contact with me. She looked down and said, “I’m busy, you’re going to have to come after school.” She indeed was not busy as she was doing a crossword puzzle and ordering stuff for fashion club. I muttered something along the lines of “Yeah it looks like it” and walked out of class. I went straight to my principal he came with me back to class. He explained to her if she didn’t turn herself around then she would be off of the fashion club. He also mentioned that she would be randomly observed for the reminder of the school year. This of course didn’t help my case because she was more upset with me, but it did allow me to get answers I needed.
When I was younger I always had the ability to ask a variety of question about my reading or writing. As I grew up, throughout the years I realized I needed to become more independent with my studies. As I stated previously when my parents got divorced, my studies got harder as I didn’t always get to talk to my mom about my readings. I didn’t have someone to bounce ideas off of, which was a struggle throughout Ms. Lefrancios class because I couldn’t understand a lot of the old readings. Even though I still had Mr. Kehowski it still was not the same. I felt almost like an annoyance to him at times. Although he never got bothered by me asking questions, Ms. Lefrancios was bothered if a student would ask her questions. It could have been the fact that she was an advanced English teacher that expected students to understand everything. It may have been the fact that since we were seniors we wouldn’t care about our work as much. This wasn’t the case for me I took pride in each assignment I did. I can say both my mom and Ms.Lefrancios were able to strengthen me as a student. Without my mom being there to help me with my reading and writing twenty-four seven, and Ms. Lefrancios not wanting to help me out during class I was able to use various sources to help me. The sources I used were Mr. Kehowski, the internet, books, and even my friends. These sources are what helped me learn different concepts and will continue to help me with my education. I plan to use these sources to restore my love for reading once again. I am now currently starting to get my confidence back in my reading and writing.
