REFLECTIVE ESSAY
INTRODUCTION
My name is Ben Pan and when I first attended ACLC in seventh grade, I was an anti-social, dispassionate, and ignorant youth; complete with suffering grades and an interest in nothing but video games. Since then, I have expanded my horizons and have discovered much about myself; not only as a learner, but also as a person. I’ve learned simple things such as what genres of music bring me to life and what class subject interests me the most. And I’ve also learned aspects of myself such as my political ideology, my personality, and my work ethic.
"I'd rather make mistakes than make nothing at all."
- Ekko , League of Legends
"No time for worrying."
- Braum, League of Legends
Personal Qualities, Work Habits And Attitudes
Two of my personal qualities include responsibility and sociability. I have had perfect attendance since kindergarten and I hold it upon myself to never be late to anything. In group projects, I am the anchor that people can rely on to always get the things that I’m responsible for done. However, this has not always been the case. In middle school, I didn’t take my responsibilities seriously and so I suffered from poor grades and a multitude of write ups to the JC system. Since about two years ago, I’ve owned up to my responsibilities. I went from a barely passing student, to one who holds straight A’s all year round. Since then, I have also never been written up for breaking any school rules. Sociability is a must at ACLC. Since we have a project-based curriculum, learners often find themselves working on group projects; much more so than in a traditional school. For instance, in my freshmen year, I cooperated with many different and unique learners to create and present multiple powerpoint presentations throughout the year in just my English and Current Life Issues classes alone. In every year of Spanish class that I took, I had to consistently be able to work with learners I never knew or worked with before in order to make the magic happen and to get things done.
New Basics
Growing up in a chinese household, I learned to write, speak, and read chinese alongside english. English was mostly spoken at school, whilst chinese was spoken around my relatives and my parents. I’ve also taken and completed every ACLC offered spanish up to Spanish 3. The english classes I’ve taken here at ACLC have helped me develop my own academic voice in my writing on top of improving the very basics. I can’t believe that just a few years ago, I didn’t even know how to format english papers. I feel that the Socratic Seminars that I’ve participated in greatly show my mastery of the basics. In order to prepare for a socratic, you must first read and annotate whatever text is being discussed. This means that I have to read and understand as most of the text as possible. In the socratic seminars themselves, you have to be able to listen to other people’s ideas and sometimes incorporate them into your own understanding of the text at hand. You also have to be able to clearly communicate your thoughts about the text to others. My favorite class has always been math because the answers are always logical and I feel like the facilitators that I’ve had for my math courses were stellar in teaching me the things I needed to learn in order to be successful in said math courses. Thus far, I’ve taken geometry, algebra 2, and precalculus — they’re usually amongst my highest grades — and I’m now working towards passing calculus at ACLC.
Thinking and Reasoning Skills
ACLC has taught me how to learn, how to think creatively, and how to make better decisions. ACLC taught me that learning isn’t just about memorizing pages upon pages of facts and boring details. It can be so much more if you chase after the knowledge. The science fair projects that learners have to complete every year are a great example. Outside the scientific method, there are no real boundaries as to what your project can be about. You aren’t assigned a topic, but rather, you the learner, have the power to make your science fair project about whatever you want to learn about. The whole premise of ACLC revolves around learners having the freedom to facilitate their own learning. As I grew older, ACLC taught me how to properly manage my time and how to be efficient and organized. Project periods really place the responsibility on learners as they can be both a blessing and a curse. If utilized properly, you can go home every night with little to no homework, but if you waste time, you can just as easily be buried by the workload. It’s decisions like these that really make or break your academic life. I spent most of middle school freshman year of high school struggling to keep up with the workload because I made poor decisions on how to allocate my time. At the start of my sophomore year, I realized that this was major roadblock on my way to success, so I devised a plan to start doing homework during project periods and it worked! Once I took full advantage of project periods, I found myself living a far less stressed out life, solely because the work I had to do at home was cut in half every night.
Interpersonal Abilities
During sophomore year and a part of junior year, I volunteered at the Oakland Main Library Children’s Room where I collaborated with the head librarian and other volunteers to organize events that benefited the children who frequent the children’s room. One of the programs that I cooperated with other volunteers on was the annual summer reading program. It was a great experience for me as I was given the opportunity to help motivate kids (mostly elementary schoolers) to read books over the summer with the incentive of rewards if they hit certain milestones. At ACLC, math has always been a subject area where many of my fellow peers have needed help in. And because I understand most topics in math more so than my peers, I’m always more than happy to help assist other learners when they’re stuck. I remember one particular experience when I was in seventh grade, where I helped another learner through their math homework at MAS by teaching them all the skills they needed to know in order to succeed. I’ve exercised leadership by being part of educational leadership. Since it was for the creative expressions class, I was required to be able to communicate ideas with the facilitator and to motivate the kids in class to participate in activities. Sometimes this meant I had to lead the exercises and other times it meant that I had to take charge and be an example. Seeing as the creative expressions class was graded almost completely on participation in class, it was crucial for the learners to want to participate in activities, or they would struggle in the class.
Technology
Technology has always been a source of fascination for me. Furthermore, it’s impossible to avoid it in the 21st century so it is pivotal that people learn how to utilize it. I use technology everyday for school, heck, I’m using it to type this paragraph and I’m going to use it when I finally create my senior website. Every report or essay that I am expected to “write” is usually typed on either Microsoft Word or Google Docs and there aren’t really any exceptions to this at ACLC. There are chromebooks and laptops for in-class work should the facilitator decide we need them, and it is required for me to know how to access my grades and assignments on Jupiter Grades. I have used powerpoint for a TedTalk that I did in Current Life Issues class, and I have utilized prezi for both Learner Led Conference presentations and for a final project presentation in Pre-Calculus. I have also learned to use Reason in Digital Music, Sony Vegas in Digital Video Studios, and Photoshop in Visual Communications. Through trial and error, I’ve learned how to be selective about my technology. I used to use Microsoft Word for typing up essays, but after a few experiences where I lost all my work and progress due to electrical outages, I switched to Google Docs because it suited me better by saving my work automatically. Technology isn’t something to be abused though. I have to be able to use to technology responsibly and appropriately; especially in school. I never have my phone out during class, and I always put it away for tests. I recognize that while it can be fine to entertain yourself with technology outside of school; chromebooks, laptops, phones, and computers at school are to be used for academic purposes only and not for personal entertainment.
Conclusion
I can’t believe that it’s been six years since I first stepped foot into ACLC, and even more so how far I’ve come both academically and personally. I’ve transformed from an awkward, lazy, and shy kid into a confident, responsible young adult and if you were to show my seventh grade self who I am today, he’d be shocked speechless. My seventh grade self wouldn’t believe that I’d make it through all three years of spanish with an A, since seventh grade me failed Intro to Spanish. Seventh grade me wouldn’t believe that he’d turn out to be a straight A student, since seventh grade me pulled C’s in all of his core classes. Seventh grade me, would congratulate present-day me for pulling my life together from the addictions of online gaming. And I can confidently say that the present-day me, would be able to proudly stand tall and face the seventh grade me with a smile.
