School Autobiography

For preschool through Kindergarten, I attended St. Luke’s. It is still thriving today and is located on the same campus as my home church, St. Luke’s Episcopal Church. I do not remember much about it except for two things. One I was apparently held back a year. I think this was a decision made by both my parents and the leading educator at the school, but I really don’t know. Second, it had to be a pretty good school because both my sisters went there before me.



For Elementary school, I ended up attending three different schools. For first through second grade, I attended Southwest Elementary School. It was a pretty good school, but not very racially diverse. Most of the students came from Hope Valley Farms or Woodcroft neighborhoods, which at the time were primarily made up of middle class, white families. There were very few African-American kids. For third grade, I attended a school up in Hendersonville, North Carolina for a brief time. At that time, my parents were divorced, and I was staying with my mom. A few weeks into the year, I came back to Durham and ended back up at Southwest Elementary for third grade. For fourth and fifth grade, I ended up attending Hope Valley Elementary School. It was a new school at the time, and the district decided to do some redrawing of the district maps. This lumped many of my friends from Southwest into Hope Valley. I believe my dad ended up transferring me to Hope Valley so I could stay with my friends.






After elementary school, my dad decided that it was time to move me to a middle school that was a little closer to home. When my parents had separated and my mom had moved to Hendersonville, my dad decided to allow my sisters and me to finish up at the schools where we were at. Since my sisters were in high school, he decided to just move me to Brogden Middle School.



Brogden Middle School was much more racially diverse than my previous schools. This school was located very close to Downtown Durham, and of the total population, 33% were white, 45% were Black, and the rest was Hispanic/other. According to the school’s report card, the school did ok on the EOG tests and the EOC tests that were offered. Most of the scores were still below state averages, but they still had really good growth. The results can be seen through this link http://www.ncreportcards.org/src/schDetails.jspPage=2&pSchCode=306&pLEACode=320&pYear=2003-2004

When I went to high school, I attended Riverside High School, which was a little more than five minutes from my house. These four years I will never forget. Part of the reason was the fact that it was in the first two that I finally decided what subject I wanted to teach. I had already decided in eighth grade that I wanted to teach after I taught a short lesson in my Algebra I class, but I still had no idea what I wanted to teach. After going through Geometry and Algebra II, I knew that I wanted to teach math. I was also heavily involved with the Site-Based Decision Making Committee. My membership on this committee came about when I decided that I wanted to do something like SGA. I went to the head of SGA and basically asked if there was anything I could do that was like SGA, but not run. She recommended the committee. I went to the first meeting and was hooked. The committee is a vital part of the school and is made up of parents, teachers, students, faculty, and the principal. The job of the committee is to decide on important matters including things like implementing block scheduling, the school improvement plan, and finding a principal. I was on this committee for my four years of high school and held the positions of vice-chair and chair. By the end of my four years, I had developed a really good relationship with my principal.
I was also involved with National Honors Society, Spanish Club, and History Club. I was able to take my first steps into teacher education through the Teacher Cadet program. It was this program that helped strongly solidify my passion to teach math. I was placed in an English classroom for my equivalent to student teaching and did not like that. So, I knew that I did not want to teach English. At that time, I liked many aspects of English, but that class showed me that it was something that I didn’t want to teach. When that class was done, I was ready for my four years of teacher education.




Now, it is time to move the serious stuff about Riverside. My membership on the Site-Based committee allowed me to get a glance into the all the requirements the state has for all the schools. So, I was up to date on everything. I do not remember much. To help me, the following is a link to the performance of the school from the year I graduated: http://www.ncreportcards.org/src/schDetails.jsp?Page=2&pSchCode=365&pLEACode=320&pYear=2007-2008

From what I remember and from what this link gives, Riverside had always done fairly well on the EOCs (End of Course Tests). When I mean fairly well, I mean they were above the district average and sometimes the state average. Yet, we knew that there were several areas that needed vast improvement. These included raising proficiency rates for African Americans and Hispanics, raising the graduation rate, raising the number of participants in AP courses, and much more. By the end of my four years, I think we did a lot of this because Riverside became a school of progress, which is a good recognition. I hope this has and will continue.