Anticipation

While I was reading this section of Teaching Hope, I found myself feeling rather connected with the author of the seventh entry.  The main focus of his piece is the idea that the students who are having trouble in school aren’t the only ones with issues to deal with.  I connected with this because my high school had an issue with identifying problems.  The students who needed the most help in their home lives were also the students who performed the best in the classroom.  The teachers spent much more of their time dealing with students who were misbehaving and falling behind, while ignoring the obvious problems in front of them.

            I did have one English teacher in high school that helped all of his students.  For one assignment every year, he would submit our essays into a statewide writing contest.  In doing this, he gave shy students a chance to highlight there writing talents.  It also helped as a motivational tool for the students who weren’t interested in writing. 

            I also felt connected to this writer because of his reasoning for going into teaching.  Just like him, I had an intuition that I would follow education.  However, where he cites Martin Luther King Jr. as his inspiration, I would say mine is Kenneth Bryant (my eighth grade social studies teacher).