I grew up in a family that was never comfortable financially, in a large urban city in Australia, with divorced parents. This was the cause for many challenges I had to face in my education. As my parents continued to work on themselves and their relationship, I believe they overlooked their role in my educational growth and how important a sense of stability is for their child. Of course, they didn’t do this on purpose, but I believe this was one of the primary damaging factors in my learning as we moved from location to location, apartment to apartment, year after year.
I was given no choice but to live through an extremely unusual lifestyle in comparison to my peers and the average person that I was surrounded by. I attended three different schools before grade six, and three different schools after that until I graduated high school. I went to six different schools before I graduated high school. This is highly unusual for most and obviously a huge obstacle in ones education.
Two of the High schools I attended were in America because my athletic ability on a basketball court helped me earn scholarships which ultimately led to me moving to the United States by myself. A scary, but hopefully worthwhile move to make. Because my education was so fragmented and unstable while I was in Australia, I went on to lack so many critical skills that my peers seemed to have a clear understanding of. The culture shock and feelings of loneliness were more obstacles in my education that I didn’t anticipate I’d have to overcome. Although I attended so many different schools in my life, the racial demographics of each of the schools was mainly white. Having an unspoken connection to your peers and even a sense of unity is something that I lacked because I was surrounded by people that looked nothing like me.
127 our experts are availableright now
I clearly represented the minority, and this was another obstacle. I never had things easy, but I never gave up on myself or my potential to be successful in life. From a young age, I knew how important education was. That is something that is drilled into most childrens heads and it stuck with me. But this was still a challenge having to go day to day in a place I felt I stood out for the wrong reasons. I felt behind.
I was always questioning whether I was good enough or if I was working hard enough. I was attempting to complete a full course load, as well as balancing basketball and my athletics on top of that. I felt I needed to be successful in basketball because that was the only way I would be able to attend a Division 1 college. Luckily, I worked hard enough, and this dream came true. But the road to get here was a constant feeling of nervousness and anxiety that I couldn’t shake. This is a feeling I’m sure many others go through also, no matter their ethnic background or race, but I am confident these feelings were heightened for me because of all the adversities I had been faced with.
I have been through so much, and I know that plays a huge role in my views on my educational experience. But there are other people that feel the same way but haven’t been through anything like that. This is because there is so much space for improvement in our current education systems. Education plays an important role in every individual’s life. For this reason, an emphasis should be put on the importance of educational programs regardless of whether they are public or private. This would have a significant impact on the growth of future generations.
The quality of education between private and public schools was an important topic in this class and has stuck with me because of how closely I can relate to the topic. While public schooling needs urgent change in most cases, I believe education as a whole needs urgent change. Reducing the hours, days, weeks, or even months that students spend having to learn the most uninteresting and useless material needs to change. It is full of dissatisfaction and boredom and I think students need to feel excited to learn. Students and teachers play hand in hand in the educational process.
Teachers need to effectively teach so students can effectively learn. On one side, students typically blame their teachers for their lack of knowledge and ability to keep them engaged. More than not, a student will blame their teacher for their lacking academic achievements. It was so extremely rare that I’d remember a classroom experience because of something valuable I thought I learned. Each day was filled with the same repetitive routine, having to complete the same aimless assignments every week. As soon as I submitted whatever I needed to submit, I’d wipe my brain clean of whatever material I had to suffer through in order to complete the assignment. Education shouldn’t be this way.
It was very hard for me and many of my peers to realize the value of learning because of the large amounts of boring and seemingly useless information that was being taught to us. This leads to sitting in a classroom, feeling like nothing but our time is being wasted. Teachers begin to feel the same way and it’s a vicious cycle that hasn’t seen much change in recent years. This is no coincidence because there is hardly any class material or classroom discussion that we can take away and apply to better our lives outside of school. I was told that school should be compared to taking medicine. It isn’t fun, but it’s useful. I firmly believe it needs to be both fun and useful.
My life has been based around basketball for as long as I can remember. My educational experience has been so poor that I told myself It was either basketball or nothing. I’ve luckily gotten to a point where basketball has given me the opportunity to attend an amazing college, but I know basketball won’t last forever. I have never taken a class about education where the content has stuck with me, but after taking this class, reading comments from peers, and reading through course material. I believe I want to help be a part of the change in education that I think needs to happen. I want future generations to appreciate and value school for what it is. A place to learn. I don’t want them to dread having to go everyday like so many people do currently. I don’t want people to have to grow up feeling the way I did towards education.
Education is too important, and like we’ve talked about in class, the primary ways of being educated in private and public schools needs to change for the better. I’m glad I had the opportunity to take this course because I believe this was one of the first real positive educational experiences I have had in my life. Learning about the inequalities within education and being able to relate what I learned back to my life has been an amazing experience.
