Scholarship / "student making an A with half of the class failing" English: subject i excelled in [6]

Prompt

Discuss the subject you excel or have excelled. To what factor do you attribute your success?

My essay

Three thousand students rattle around me. They scream, they hug, and they make the excretions that help me guess their words. I hear jokes about Helen Killer but "do the Helen killer" is no joke. Although I have keen eyes, great hearing and the ability to speak when I moved to United States and enroll in high school I understood English as much as a person with out extraordinary abilities could understand bees language. However, through high school from freshmen year to sophomore year and now senior year I went from ABC picture book to Shakespeare's Hamlet.

In 2007 my parents decided we were moving to U.S. The news surprised me as storm from clear blue sky would. Moving to United states didn't appear as the biggest problem after I reached Dallas but the language. When school started I was enrolled in two English for other language speakers:one for writing and reading the other for speaking and listening both level one. During the first week of class I received the text book. I opened some pages in to the book; I saw a giant 'A' then a humongous red apple's picture under that was the word 'Apple' and to the left was the how to pronounce Apple. The book reminded me of a gift my parents gave me when I was in kindergarten.

The teacher, Mrs. A, was patient and understanding; I run to her room every morning before class start and borrow more advanced books. When second semester start Mrs. A provided me with more worksheets to work on from her level two and three class. Around the end of the year, course registration form came I decided to sign up for regular English in the up coming year.

Throughout my sophomore and junior year I stayed in regular English. Regular English had more writing assignments; a text book composed of more than a thousand pages, long stories, and there wasn't a picture of an apple; we read books like "to kill a mockingbird" by lee Harper and the great gatsby. As a junior I had a new teacher Mrs. T. Mrs. T required me to study vocabulary words and to write more than others in me class. Although I enjoyed writing and learning poetry Mrs. T's assignment took too much extra time. I made A's all my sophomore and junior year at the end of junior year Mrs. T suggested that I pick Advance Placement (AP) English 4 or AP English composition.

Although I haven't been speaking English for more than four years, I didn't back down from Mrs. T's challenge. I enrolled for AP English 4. We had a summer reading list of three master pieces and we chose two of them for the assignment, instead of more than 100 novels for regular English. Othello by Shakespeare, wuthering heights by Emily Bronte, and Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austin were the three choices; I chose the last two. Mrs. R, my new English teacher, passed out a six pages long syllabus written in font 9 Times New Roman. The syllabus had the list of novels and plays assigned for the class one of them was Hamlet by Shakespeare. AP English is much harder and interesting; For me the books took longer to understand but they had themes and they told stories unlike a picture of a simple apple. I knew I wasn't going to be making 100s, as in ESL and Regular English: however, I wasn't expecting to fail the class either. I had 76 the first six weeks of class; I felt a failure for life. An unacceptable 76 on my progress report didn't kill me, and for the third six weeks I had a 94, averaging the semester for a B.

Question:- can you help me by editting the essay or give me advise how to better write this essay? Thank you

Scholarship / Social studies and the effect Mr.A had on me [2]

Prompt:- Discuss the subjects with which you had difficulty. What factors do you believe contributed to your difficulties? How have you dealt with them so they will not cause problems for you again? In what areas have you experienced the greatest improvement? What problem areas remain?

any spelling or grammar mistakes, focus, boring any thing will help thank you.

I didn't have a preference of class until fourth grade. Until fourth grade I had the same teacher for all five subjects I was supposed to take. Then it was time for my amazing teacher of four years Mr. M to transfer to another school. We were young, we didn't understand why Mr. M had to leave. So all of my classmates including me, greeted the new teacher, Mr. A, who was a preacher in the school's boarding school and Catholic Church with a hatred. Mr. A wasn't the nicest teacher ever; he needed some anger management treatments and, of course, our attitude towards him didn't help. He wasn't assigned to teach all courses but Bible study and social studies. He began his career by threatening one of the kids in my class that he will throw him out the window if he doesn't follow orders.

Throughout the year every one had the chance to be threatened by Mr. A, some more than others. Every day was another day to look forward to his whipping stick and terrorizing words. He had reasons to punish students but his reason wasn't justifiable. He had the expectation we should finish hundred pages of notes including maps and drawings every night. We were fourth graders and I failed asleep before I was done coping half way, same was true for all of the other kids. There for, every coming day the class hour was done while Mr. A gave the punishment to all the students who hadn't done the assignment, every one.

Mr. A didn't have all bad trait and keeping his promise was one of his best traits. He got a raise every year along with our class; He followed me through ninth grade in every social studies class, just as he promised in fourth grade. He whipped every one with stick and a whip with a stick to the palm was normal in Ethiopia but more than palm Mr. A's whip hit on the head and on the back and on every part of the body Mr. A could find while the student was getting the punishment. More than all, the "lift ride" by the ear and the slam against the walls was the most painful. But for six years I had six different text books to copy and learned nothing.

Without any knowledge of geography or history courses my hatred of social studies class grew deeper throughout the six years. It even followed me to the United States when I moved during my freshman year. Mr. A didn't move with me, but a new teacher didn't make me enjoy social studies any better. After moving to the U.S. all I had left of Ethiopia was the books written about her, Google earth image and my memories. My interest to reconnect with my country and my friends left back home initiated me to read history.

After reading many history books; reading history became like a hobby I enjoy spending free time on and when I have assignment from my vicious history classes I see them as a follow up history I'm reading about a country. That way I didn't have to think of taking history class as being tied back to Mr. A. Mr. A's evil personality and six years of torture wasn't going to consume me; they say if you are told some thing many times you start believing it, though Mr. A have told me how dumb and stupid and many more things that I am I have learned to tell my self I am good enough and I am smart twice as much as any body telling me other wise. Because of Mr. A I might never be great at social studies but doctors don't need to know when every war and Versailles happened to be great doctors. In the other hand they need to be emotionally stable against all odds and challenges; Mr. A thought me exactly how to do that at a young age.