Essay on Literacy Narrative

Submitted By qwelborn
Words: 1531
Pages: 7

Quentin W.
English 101
September 9th, 2013

Writing should comes off as a passionate expression of words. Every writing and every word needs to have direct meaning to what you're trying to expose to all readers. Mrs. Leffler was an inspiration to me in the 11th grade as my AP English teacher. The first day of class she dropped the F-bomb as she walked around with her curly hair. Her attitude was free and her expressions were bold. We thought she was crazy, but truly she was just one of a kind, somebody who seemed to have figured out the true meaning of life. The smile on her face gave it away and her stylistic writings were complimentary of this. Her way of teaching was truly unmatched. Although her attitude might be over the top, what we learned was the true reason why we, as humans, have the ability to read and write. Often times we overlook these simple aspects and she gave us an important lesson, one that she hoped we would never forget. The ability to create sounds with our mouths, drawing of signs, symbols, letters, and numbers with our hands, and that the creation of words on a piece of paper can mean more then to just one's self. It can change the world one person at a time. The smell of the classroom fragrance was strong. A clean smell, almost like you were walking into a soap factory. The walls were clustered and full of posters and author's names from the past and present, and a white board full of scribble from what looked like the markings of a dry erase marker days before. Karen Leffler was the face of this classroom. Karen, as she told us to call her, was a middle aged woman with a husband and two little girls. And on the first day, she let us into her life. Scrambling around with her short hair a mess, she welcomed us into her classroom. This was a new sight to us. The door to her classroom was normally closed, and if you were to ever walk by, you would have wondered what was behind those doors. Not that we would have known by standing outside the classroom, but the door didn't fit her style. In fact, the door was oddly plain. If you had not ever been in Karen's class before, you wouldn't have known the importance of this. But as soon as all 24 of her students entered, she made a point to close the door once again, in a swift, short motion. In the first couple of weeks in class we started with reading the book 1984 by author George Orwell. This piece of work, written in 1949, is a dystopian novel that took place in the Oceanian province Airstrip One , formally known today as Great Britain. A society under control of an elite inner party, people are persecuted for acts against the government, thoughtcrimes, and any independent thinking going against their government policies. Karen would have us write essays on topics of how we would feel if we were put in a situation with no self control, and all of our thoughts were being monitored by government officials. Week after week, and prompt after prompt, she would tell us to write papers on how we would feel loosing access to our cell phones, family members, books, and internet accessibility. Our writings would do nothing except become generic, and it was obvious we really didn't understand the full effects of what we were trying to comprehend. Typical high school students, oblivious to what we were thinking. So we were done with 1984, right? Take a test and on to the next book. A high energetic story, full of love, lust, money, and rich people partying in Long Island; The Great Gatsby was introduced to our class and immediately we all fell in love. F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote this book in 1925 and based it off the American Dream, which is often today described as a person or family living in America hitting it off big. Nice cars, houses, and more money then you would ever know what to do with. In the roaring 20's, people were known for breaking boundaries and going out of the box as never seen before. This is where we get the base for