Levi Scherschel Rachel Reynolds English 106 January 29, 2014 Total Reconstruction Acoustic guitars, the smell

of black coffee, and the faint scratches of an antique vinyl all bring me back to that classroom at Bedford North Lawrence High, on the third floor in the English department. This is where I would meet my most significant literacy sponsor, Mr. Kupersmith. My favorite memory from that class is from listening to Mr. Kupersmith give me praise on my final writing assignment. It was a rhetorical analysis on a choice between three songs. I chose the one song that I was most familiar with. It was a song by rapper Jay-Z featuring Mr. Hudson called Forever Young. I spent roughly a total sixteen hours working on and used more than five rough drafts and the final draft was something I was truly proud of and Mr. Kupersmith was quick to recognize the hard work I put into the assignment. But, Mr. Kupersmith and I didnt quite see eye-to-eye until after the second semester of the class. I would have laughed in the face at someone who would have told me, at the beginning of the school year, that Kupe would eventually become a literacy sponsor, a role model and a good friend to me. It began the beginning of my junior year of high school. I had no experience in a college level class and I had three on my plate that would last for two semesters. The AP class that would bring the most challenges to me would be the AP English Language and Composition class taught by the notorious Mr. Kupersmith. I had never had Mr. Kupersmith although he

taught both Freshman English and Sophomore English, I never got the pleasure to experience his teaching. But I had heard a lot about him. Mr. Kupersmith was the typical young coffee house writer and that made him a god to the hipster, know-it-all, brown-nosing students. Nothing annoyed me more. Mr. Kupersmith wasnt like all the other math or science teachers. He was fairly young, in his early forties (which is significantly younger than all my other teachers). He always had a scratchy looking beard and his hair was long, like some kind of scrawny lumberjack disguised as an accountant. Mr. Kupersmith was the cool teacher from the students perspective, not so much the other faculty members. He liked to pester the math department teachers that took their job too seriously. One of his most famous ways to step on their toes was his announcements. At the last ten minutes of the school day, Mr. Kupersmith got give the evening announcements and he would talk monotonously and try to waste as much of the time as he could because he knew it drove the math teachers nuts. Mr. Kupersmiths classroom was also very different from the other classrooms. It had a more relaxed feeling. Stocked bookshelves covered nearly every wall and plants were scattered in random places. I cant even remember what color the walls were because every inch was covered by pictures of the places hed been. By his desk was his acoustic guitar that he was exceptionally good at playing. His room also had a Keurig coffee maker that students were welcome to come in and use at any time. In the back corner of the room, Mr. Kupersmith had an old, turquoise colored record player. It was mostly a decoration but he had quite the collection of vinyls including Rod Stewart and Louis Armstrong. Mr. Kupersmith was definitely well known as the cool teacher.

I was a lot different than that. I was a shy, cross country and track runner who put his social life and running career above most classroom responsibilities, especially my English assignments. The assignments for English were polar opposites to the other assignments in Math or Science. I was good at those subjects. I could do my trigonometry without even thinking about it and I usually chugged those out of the way as my teammates made our way to cross country meets on the bus with a million different conversations going on at once. But English wasnt as second-nature to me as math was. It was difficult and frustrating for me to sit down and write a creative essay or rhetorically analyze a text from some goofy-looking, 18th century, French writer. So a lot of the time, I would try to just do the bare minimum or Id just purposefully forget about the whole assignment. This would obviously come back to bite me in the butt later on. At the end of the first semester, Mr. Kupersmith decided to spend the last day before Christmas break to sit down with each student and together, discuss their grades in the class and why they were receiving the grades he or she was getting. When this was brought to my attention, I could feel my stomach start to twist into a million different knots and I knew this was going to be excruciating. It was my turn to go see Mr. Kupersmith and hear a lecture on how I wasnt applying myself to my assignments and how I needed to get it in gear. I sat down next to Mr. Kupersmith as we looked in the grade book and we both looked at a few Bs more Cs than Bs and more Ds than Cs. It was absolutely humiliating. I sat there with my face that had a lot of resemblance to a big ripe tomato. I knew I was about to get an ear full. As I sat there with my tail between my legs, I look at Mr. Kupersmith and he says to me, Levi, I know that this isnt the type of grade that youre used to making and I want to know what the problem is.

I explained to him how I simply didnt understand how to read between the lines in our texts or how to bring emotion into my writing. After explaining my predicament, he invited me to come into his classroom during my lunch hour if I ever needed any help with any assignment. I wasnt too fond of this idea. Most of the people that hangout in Mr. Kupersmiths classroom during lunch were the weird, hipster kids that were artsy and just arrogant. But after my mom caught wind of my grade in English, the option to take Mr. Kupersmiths invitation or not, was not my decision anymore. I was forced to do everything in my power to improve my grade in his class. The first day I went was very strange. Mr. Kupersmith was at his desk playing guitar for the hipster kids and I didnt know how to approach the pow-wow they were having. I must have been on planet Mars. Nearly everyone was dressed like they were 50 years older with guitars and ukuleles and talking about bands that Im sure didnt even exist. I felt as if I was a little too mainstream to be accepted by them. Mr. Kupersmith notice me come in and quickly shooed away the others. We sat down and discussed everything that could use tweaking in my first draft of my assignment. My sessions with Mr. Kupersmith started out as biweekly, then advanced to weekly, and I eventually found myself spending three days a week just chilling and talking to Kupe about assignments, reading material, music, sports, and a hundred different other subjects. Kupe wasnt as bad as I originally thought. One day when I went to his room just to relax, I got to talking to Kupe and he told me about his adopted son. About ten years ago, Kupe, met a guy who didnt really come from a fortunate background. He was in his twenties and was in and out of foster families his entire childhood and was now going down a path fueled by an abuse of Percocets and alcohol. Kupe saw that this man needed help so he decided to adopt him. Since then, the mans life has changed

dramatically and is on his way to a much better path. When Kupe told me this, I realized he was a true role model to look up to. It was finally the end of the school year and our final assignment was a doozy. It was the rhetorical analysis I talked about in the beginning about the song. I knew this assignment was significant and I really wanted to do well on it. My chill, meetings with Kupe turned into brain strenuous, head-pounding hard work. It was crunch time. I worked very hard on that assignment and went through many drafts before I finished my final draft that got an A. Mr. Kupersmith was a great influence on me. He pushed me and he taught me skills that I still use in my reading and writing. He was a good literacy sponsor to me in the way he helped me to gain an understanding and passion for writing and literature. I still keep in contact with Kupe and he even made an appearance at my graduation open house party. Im extremely blessed to have been given the opportunities Ive had from Kupe and Ill continue to show my gratitude to him for a long time.