Educational Autobiography

Educational Autobiography
Here is my story. Much of my educational experience was marked with moving from place to place. My father worked for the government and about every five years we were forced to transfer to a new location. I remember very little of my kindergarten and first grade experiences except that I began kindergarten late because I was born in August. During those two years we lived in Seville, Ohio, a small farming town in the middle of no-where. I was probably one of the only racial minorities in my school. I wasn’t conscious of it, however. In my second grade class we had a computer that I loved to play on. We moved halfway into the school year to the tiny island of Guam.
I had never heard of Guam before then. It might as well have been a foreign country compared to Seville, Ohio. I spent my first year finishing the first grade at a private Christian school. Apparently the public schools in Guam were bad and if you wanted a good education you sent your children to private schools. I didn’t like it because I didn’t have many friends. This was the first time I felt like a minority, not because of my race but my nationality. I was one of the few “mainlanders.”
After finishing the first grade, I switched schools and started going to Guam Adventist Academy, a small Seventh Day Adventist private school near our house. It was a much better school and I liked my second grade teacher, Ms. Yosko. Most of the teachers were white missionaries. We had to wear uniforms at this school. I was also close to being allowed to skip a grade.
In the third grade, I excelled at reading and writing and was placed in fourth grade level English. I wrote a research paper about volleyball and my classmates voted that it was the best in the class and I won the “Golden Gecko Award.” I had a lot more friends at GAA than at the other private school. Most of the students in my class were Chamorro (Guamanian) or Filipino. I played the piano in the third grade but stopped after a year. I also started taking Japanese classes but didn’t like it and quit after a short time.
In the fourth grade someone gave my family a Nintendo video gaming system. It was blessing and a curse. I started gaming heavily and spending more and more time in front of the television. I had always loved being outdoors but I also loved technology and video games were an exciting and brave new world. My parents decided to enroll me in soccer to help curb these reclusive tendencies. They valued the power of organized team sports.
I took up violin in the fifth grade from my classroom teacher but didn’t stick with it for very long. I also got into my first fight. My sixth grade year was turbulent. It must have been a confusing time for me because I was very rebellious. We had three teachers that year and the first two left because of my class. I nearly had to go home on multiple occasions for acting out. At the end of the first term, our school split because some of the teachers were fed up with the administration and felt that the quality of the school was going down. They picked a few students from the sixth grade up who they felt had the most potential and asked them if they would be interested in starting a new school. I was chosen. I liked having a smaller class size with my friends. Towards the end of that school year, I moved to Oregon.
Coming into the seventh grade at a public school from a different country (it felt that way at least) was a very difficult experience for me. I didn’t have any friends, I didn’t know what to wear because we didn’t have uniforms and I was in an awkward developmental stage. I was teased a lot because I was socially awkward and some kids tried to pick fights with me. Others even spit on me. It was one of the worst memories I have of school.
Not all of it was bad, however. I loved my Social Studies and English classes. My seventh grade English teacher was really personable and cool. Her class felt safe and fun. My eighth grade Social Studies teacher was the same way. There was something about both of those teachers that made students like them. We also learned a lot about slavery and the Holocaust. During my eighth grade year I was placed in advanced English. I also had two close friends, one Korean American and the other Mormon.
Entering high school was better for me socially. I started making more friends. My grades suffered because I had terrible study habits during that time. My GPA was probably about 2.0. When my parents found out, they exploded. It really hurt me that they were so angry and I was also mad at myself. I felt like I was under a lot of stress. Shortly after I had a brain hemorrhage, or internal bleeding of the brain. It was a shock to everyone in my family and also to many people at my school. Luckily, there was no permanent damage the doctors could identify and I reentered school after a few weeks. Unfortunately, because I was so behind in my schoolwork I had to drop two classes.
Throughout the next three years of high school much changed. I began to have a harder time with my parents. We always seemed to disagree and clash. When there was a big disagreement, my dad would often take the authoritarian position. This made me resentful and I wanted to create a separate identity from them. My parents loved me, but my dad’s hot temper made it hard. My grades were often a point of contention and I also developed a habitual lateness. When I would come home late without calling, they would ground me.
My junior year was when things began to resolve. I started attending a youth group at a church and I became a Christian that same year. Up to that point I had felt like I was running a rat race, trying to be popular. At church, I found a place to belong to where I felt safe and people weren’t judging me. My relationship with my parents also started to change for the better. I also worked with two outdoor school camps and mentored a third grader that year. I found that I really enjoyed leading kids.
My senior year I had a College Preparation English course that literally changed my life. The teacher got us all thinking about college, which I hadn’t done much of up to that point, challenged us with classical literature and taught us important skills like public speaking and debating. School had never been so interesting and educational up to that point. My English teacher was strict and traditional and it was a struggle to get an A- in but I earned it. My teacher taught me that classical literature could be approachable and that I could overcome obstacles with hard work and determination.
I entered college with some trepidation, wondering what in the world I was going to do. I considered philosophy, theology and art history but finally settled on history because I love stories, finding out how things work and writing. During college I worked with a church’s youth group leading middle school and high school kids for three years.
After college I moved to Japan where I taught English for three years in grades k-9th. This was an incredible time for me because it gave me the chance to travel around the world but also helped me decide that teaching was what I wanted to do.