HW # 39 - First School Assignment

HW #39

Part A

Questions:

1) How much does school mold us? A much as our families?
2) What is it that makes some kids hate school?
3) Do the schools we attend have a big part in determining our future?

Ideas
1) I wonder if teachers realize at the time what a powerful influence they are over students’ lives.
2) I wonder if some teachers don’t want to take that much responsibility for the influence they have over students’ lives.
3) A lot of famous and successful people say that their big regret is that they didn’t work harder in high school. When kids here this, why don’t we find it that
motivating.

Experiences
1) Dealing with kids who think their school is superior to theirs
2) Realizing that acting the same way to kids who are considered cool or who think they are cool and to kids who aren’t considered cool or who think they’re not cool is important to the way you think about yourself and to your whole community.
3) Questioning the fairness of the GPA grading system, making it so that even one bad grade freshman year can affect how colleges look at you your senior year.

Part B

When I was in 8th grade biology, I cut off the tip of my finger which flew across the room. Someone screamed, and I looked down to see a fountain of blood shooting up from my left pointer finger. My teacher, who was very athletic and regularly did well
in marathons and other competitions, swooned. She almost passed out. I think she
actually did. I yelled out, “Sombody find my finger.” I heard groans, and someone
said, “Oh gross!” One of my friends said, “I’ll get T-Bone, a teacher aid with dreadlocks and tattoos, who was afraid of nothing. T-Bone organized the search for the bloody stub and bandaged my finger. The problem was that it wouldn’t stop gushing.

The next thing I knew I was at St. Vincent’s Hospital, where Dr. Ho immediately inserted three needles into my minifinger with no warning whatsoever. The microsurgery was successful, and since Dr. Ho happened to be a plastic surgeon as well as a hand surgeon, I have hardly any scar. For weeks I had this huge bandage on my finger with a splint, and everyone I passed at school would put up a pointer finger in a mocking “We’re number one” gesture. I got the same reaction at soccer practice with my huge digit. My teacher apologized a thousand times for being such a wimp at the time of the accident. I told her that if I hadn’t already had ugly accidents like breaking my arm and wrist in three places each during soccer games and having my leg pierced by cleats, I probably would have passed out too. It also came out that I was running with scissors at the time of the slicing so all the school scissors didn’t have to be replaced.