The Mystice Knights of Silverfish

Chapter 1 – The Big Move

Chapter 2 – Teacher Bound Upward Bound

Chapter 3 – You won’t make it to Harvard

Chapter 4 – Let’s take Harvard and Yale off Your List (They might be too far of a reach)

Chapter 5 – Education not Deportation/ Save Our Schools

Chapter 6 – Posse

Chapter 7 – So This is What Being the “Minority” in College Feels Like

 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Chapter 4 – Let’s take Harvard and Columbia off Your List (They might be too far of a reach)

1) Preschool Adventures

2) Catholic School

3) Transition to Public School & the Stolen Gameboy

4) 4th and 5th Grade

5) AWKWARD YEARS

6) High School Fun

7) The 'Ford (in progress)

Chapter 2

I spent kindergarten, first grade, and second grade at Saint Catherine's, a Catholic school five minutes away from my house. In terms of the experiences that Dewey speaks of (whether helpful or miseducative), my time in Catholic school was full of them. In particular, St. Catherine's affected how I viewed myself academically relative to my peers and relative to how I was viewed as a student by people around me, which shaped how I viewed my studies and approached learning in general up until high school.

Table of Contents

Deborah Centeio

Table Of Contents

Chapter 1: Monkey See, Monkey Do

Chapter 2: No Child Left Outside

Chapter 3: That School Is For Bad Kids

Chapter 4: Diversity or Not?

Chapter 5: What Happened To All My Friends?

------------------------------------------------------------ 

Chapter 2: No Child Left Outside

As a child I spent my entire early education at the O’Hearn Elementary School. The O’Hearn was a rather small school located in my own neighborhood, and about an 8 min walk from my urban home. I attended this school from Pre-K until the 5^th grade and my happiest moments were spent there.

The building was a small one-floor structure in the shape of a complete circle, with a courtyard in the center, in which every classroom faced. There was absolutely no getting lost there! The classrooms were very simply numbered from 1-10, approximately 25 children in each grade, with at least two teachers assigned to each class. Occasionally, one was placed in a mixed classroom with two grades sharing a room. This can seem rather complex and hectic but it worked out pretty smoothly. The class did most activities and lessons together but then spilt up when grade specific learning occurred. For example, math classes were held with students of your grade level.

1. Preschool: Learning about Colors
2. Elementary School: Birds, Earthworms and Bees
3. Elementary School: Rollerblading
4. Elementary School: Pokemon Cards

Learning about Colors

This chapter discusses an altercation that I had with a student in preschool. I was being picked on and I lashed out by kicking a redheaded boy in the shin. During this altercation, I first became aware of my status as a minority in the school.

I seemed to have been oblivious to that fact for some time. In my mind, I saw the redheaded boy as an easy target; he may have been laughing at me because of my pale, yellow skin, but I fought back easily because he was no less unique than me, with his red hair and his freckles. To others, I was an easy target because I was so physically different from them. My skin color, my eyes and nose, all showed that I was not like the majority of my classmates. After the fight, I remember an older student from the elementary school entering my classroom after recess and reporting the incident to my teacher. I was being picked on, yet I was sent to time-out. The title of this chapter is a reference to race and the colors of our skin and hair. Being one of the few Asian students in the class, I was quickly aware of such characteristics and now wonder why these were never a topic of discussion in class.