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Jasey Freeze

Professor Blair

UWRT 1104

8 September 2019

Don’t Shoot for the Stars, Shoot Beyond

When I think about the people who impacted my life and prepared me for the way I

present myself today many people come to mind. My parents, friends and coaches have all

helped. One person in particular that I recall who has helped me to reach goals I wasn’t sure I

would be able to reach was my high school english teacher Mrs. Collins. She was the best

teacher I have ever had.

Mrs.Collins was your average middle-aged lady. She had shoulder length black hair that

she would wear in a small bun with pencils holding it in place or all of it down and straightened.

She was a very expressive person so normally it wasn’t hard to tell her feelings about a situation.

One way she showed her expression was through the way she spoke. She had a loud voice that

could carry all the way down the hall so in a classroom you can only imagine how loud it was.

She used her hands to talk a lot and she would always let you know if you were in trouble or

going to get in trouble with a certain look she would give you. Her eyebrows would raise up and

her eyes would widen and your body would stiffen a little. She would come into work everyday

in a dress or in khakis and a nice dress shirt. On occasions she would wear jeans since teachers

were allowed to wear them on Fridays. Her room was pretty big since we had 30-32 students.

There were two big windows in the back and then she had her big desk in there as well. In the

front of the room there was a big white board and a SMART board. She had a bunch of cute little
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inspirational posters all around her room and she had these wax warmers that would give off

smells to help us focus. She never kept all the lights in her room on. She said it made her too hot,

so she left a lamp on in the back of her classroom.

The class had the highest average of all the english classes that year. I learned more in

that one semester of her class than I had in any other english class. I had the highest grade I have

personally ever received in a english class that year. I felt like she cared to teach and didn’t just

show up to receive a paycheck. If a student was struggling with something or needed some extra

help when it was time for everyone to work independently she would walk around the room and

help anyone that needed help or something explained. For example, I missed a day of class while

we were in the middle of writing our research papers. Everyday they were going into things

pretty intensively so instead of letting me fall behind when it was private work time she came to

me desk and worked with me on what I missed the previous day. Helping her students and going

that extra step showed us that she cared and having the passion show while you are doing what

you love helps other engage and feed off of the energy that you give. This is good teaching

because it demonstrates her caring quality. One of the qualities of a good teacher is caring about

your students and hoping they learn things that will stick with them, and not just for a short time

so they can do well on a paper or test then forget what they have learned. We would also take

turns going around the room reading out loud. We would read the story section by section and

analyze it. Everyone in my class dreaded these classes because everyone got nervous to read out

loud. I was one of the people who hated these classes because I didn’t want to embarrass myself.

I can remember practicing my section I would have to read in my head before it got to me so I

wouldn’t mess up. This one time in particular I got the section with hard to pronounce words
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seeing as we were reading Shakespeare at the time. I was trying to practice it in my head but I

couldn’t pronounce one of the words so I asked my friend if they knew and they didn’t know

either. I asked the others quietly at my table and no one knew. I was freaking out because I didn’t

know how to pronounce this one word. When it was my turn, I started to read then stopped. I was

embarrassed because I had to ask for help but then realized that no one else knew either. No one

laughed at me or said anything. We all just discussed it and then moved right along. This

demonstrates good teaching because it helped with not only me improving my reading skills, but

as well as helping me personally grow. It helped me get out of my comfort zone and realizep no

one is perfect. This taught me not only an academic lesson but a life lesson that helped shape

who I am today. She would play funny videos in class about whatever lesson we were doing that

day. The video would have things we would relate to and jokes so it was easy to understand the

concept they were going to teach. I think this is good teaching because she realized none of the

best ways for us to learn was through someone who talked the same as us and could relate to us.

We would have class discussions on the reading we were supposed to do the night before. It

would be embarrassing if we didn’t have any idea of what she was talking about because we

didn’t read. I think this is good teaching because there was no consequence because reading was

not for a grade but the consequence was self embarrassment which for most of the kids in our

class was worse than a 0. This taught us to hold ourselves accountable. She gave us this reading

outline at one point during the year when we had to write our research paper that was very

helpful. We had to write a topic sentence then three sentences supporting that topic sentence then

the source we got it from.After that we copy and pasted everything together and took out the

extra words and we had a research paper. This made the workload not seem as bad and the paper
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so scary. This is good teaching because she made something that everyone dreaded become

something so easy to do. She would also have a teacher review. Whenever we would be assigned

a paper we were allowed one teacher review. This was where she would go through your paper

with you and in red pen she would mark everything from grammar to wrong sources to spelling

and basically peer edit your paper. This is good teaching because it took a while and sometimes

you would have to stay after or come early which meant she would have to do the same. This

shows she truly wanted to help everyone out to the best of her abilities

I think she believed that the students performance reflected a lot on the teacher and how

well they did. Therefore, she wanted to teach well. She wanted every student to succeed and

believed in every student. She was one of those people who believed in you even when you

might not believe in yourself. Her quotes around the room always inspired and they way she

acted reflected them. The actions she displayed resulted in people gravitating to her because it

wasn’t all fun and games which to our class showed she was prepared for class. We always had

something to do which means she had to always plan something for us to do. Our assignments

always had detailed instructions and there was always an example for us to go off of. Most of the

time the example was from something she had written. This meant she had to take personal time

outside of the class to write something to help us. As a class we recognized this and this is what

kept us motivated to work hard for her. If she was willing to put in the time and effort to prepare

us for further years then we were willing to accept the help and try our best.

I will say that Mrs.Collins would sometimes explain things in ways that we didn’t

understand so it would be hard to follow her lesson at times. The words she would use a lot of us
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were unfamiliar with. Sometimes she would explain too much to the point where we got

confused on what she wanted from us.

On the last day of class she made a statement that has stuck with me since leaving her

class. She said “Class I know all of you might have heard the saying shoot for the stars but I

don’t want you to shoot for the stars” all of us looked at each other confused for a minute. She

then went on to say “ I don’t want you to shoot for the stars because I know you can achieve

higher. Don’t ever put a limit on yourself so don’t shoot for the stars, shoot beyond”. That really

stuck with me because that just showed how much confidence she had in every single one of us.

She was the best teacher I would ever have and I am confident in saying I wouldn’t be the same

person I am today without her.