Writing to Remember: The Class That Changed My Perspective

By Matt |

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Do you remember a class that changed your life? Mine was tenth grade English. That class started as every other one had. Students from all walks of life were forced to spend 90 minutes each day together to discuss novels and write papers. We all began that year with out a care for each other, but by the time the semester was over, we had grown to cherish one another.

The primary reason for this growth was due to our eccentric teacher. She ignored most conventions of teaching and it was quick for most students to drop the “Mrs.” from her name. Everything about Parks screamed unique, from the encouragement of complete disregard of censorship to the deep passion she possessed when it came to analyzing books. Despite her oddities, she piled on work for us to do. Every minute of the class was scheduled with never enough time to finish everything. This intense workload was the first thing that forced us to grow together. In order to get everything done we had to depend on each other.

The other thing that really pried our eyes open to each other was an assignment Parks had us do towards the end of the year. We were asked to symbolize our life into a single object and then present why this object was our life to the class. While we had shared the past 15 weeks together we still largely considered each other to be mere acquaintances, certainly not people who we’d spill our deepest life experiences with.

After that project we all felt closer to one another. We were no longer a crowd forced to be in the same room. We were a community meant to share each other’s hardships. While we may not have become the closest of friends, thanks to Parks we had full appreciation of each other’s life and the experiences that went with it.