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Tyler Johnson

Prof. Williams

English 1:11

October 3, 2023

Double-Sided Educational Journey

“Progress is not linear.” (Maria Montessori) This quote shows that the path to success

isn’t always a straight road. During my high school career, I have had many teachers who have

changed my educational values and possibly my life for the better, teachers like Mr. Hilburn and

Ms. Chase. However, I have also had events like Quarantine and teachers who I won’t name that

have made me not want to learn about certain subjects and negatively impacted my view on

education as a whole. This double-sided journey of my education has had its ups and downs and

has crafted the person that I am today.

During Quarantine I became extremely lazy and I sat in my room and played video

games all the time. I fell into bad habits and rarely completed my work when we were doing

e-learning. By the time the quarantine had ended, and it was time to go back to school I had lost

a lot of my social skills because I only talked to my immediate family and people on video

games and I dreaded going back to school. I was extremely nervous and at this point, in time I

didn’t value my education so when we started back I kept these bad habits. I started to get bad

grades, I didn’t complete a lot of my assignments and I started to fall behind the rest of my

classmates. Luckily that year I had Mr. Hilburn as my math teacher.

When I was taking Mr. Hilburn's class half the year we were online and the other half

was in person so it was very weird that year. Often times I wouldn’t do my work simply because

I didn’t care about my grades or school at all. But Mr. Hilburn was always chasing me to get me
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back on the right track. He would set up Zoom meetings many times throughout the year and

when in person he would talk to me a lot about my grades and he would tell me how I should

care more about school. At the time I found it extremely annoying but after his class, I realized

that he was one of the only teachers that year who was trying to help me and cared about my

well-being. It wouldn’t be until my sophomore year of high school English with Ms. Chase that I

felt like I had another teacher who I felt cared about my education.

Ms. Chase’s class was really hard for me because in previous years my English teachers

weren’t very strict graders and were more lenient with grading. But this was not the case with

Ms. Chase although she was very nice she was much more strict with grading than any of my

previous English teachers. She graded with a 4-point system meaning if you did a few things

wrong you would normally get a 75%. However, this was because she was trying to encourage

us to make revisions on the majority of our assignments. She would always leave helpful and

clear comments that would allow me to improve my writing where I needed help and made me

feel more confident in the things I was doing correctly. I feel like since her class I have become

an exponentially better writer and it has made writing as a whole a lot easier for me because she

was always pushing me and my peers to improve.

Although I had a great teacher in Ms. Chase my sophomore year I also had a class where

I felt like I learned nothing and dreaded going to the class every day. This was my biology class

my teacher didn’t like certain students in my class due to having issues with her daughter. It

seemed like because these students hated our entire class students in other classes would tell

stories about how they had so much fun and they just talked all the time. But in our class, she

would get extremely mad when people talked. One time she told us she gave all the classes

assigned seats but later I found out that we were the only class with assigned seats. She also
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never actually taught us anything she would just find YouTube videos from Crash Course

Biology or the Ameoba sisters and then give us an assignment. Often times I would doze off or

just not listen because the class was so boring. By the time we were halfway through the class, I

started guessing and putting in no effort in the class despite her. In hindsight, I genuinely feel

like I took nothing away from that class I retained close to zero information which could partially

be on me for not paying much attention but I still would like to take the class again with a

different teacher to get a better understanding of the subject.

Mrs. Howard is currently my math teacher although I have only been taking her class for

a few months it’s the most enjoyable math class I have ever taken. This is mainly because I am

doing well in my math class for the first time since middle school. Her methods of teaching are

very helpful and she does give a lot of homework which does get on my nerves sometimes but I

think it plays a role in my being successful in that class. She is also very understanding and is

always willing to put in the effort to help you get better at math. I also really like her because she

occasionally goes on long spills about information I genuinely care about and find interesting

like college, mental health, and potential jobs for students who struggle in school. Recently she

talked about a student at her son's college who had taken their own life and spoke about how it’s

never worth it and what it does to people around you. I have struggled with my mental health in

the past so I loved it when she talked about this because it connected with me on a personal level.

Writing this paper has made me realize that one teacher or event can change your outlook

on education entirely whether it's positively or negatively. Writing about this also gave me a

better understanding of how much the good teachers helped me and made me more appreciative

of having these people involved in my education. Although there were some low points in my
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educational journey thinking back on my education has made it clear that everything and every

teacher has shaped me into the person that I am today.