Evan Ehrhart

After graduating high school, the career I want to reach in life, is to be an elementary school teacher. I am attending Penn state York the following fall semester. As an elementary teacher there are standards to reach. For example, keeping a GPA at a 3.0 average and it starts in the classroom. Therefore I will have to read and understand different techniques and learning them to teach students; also organizing my thoughts to help teach the students. As results, I will need to change the way I read, writing down my thoughts in an organized way, and studying.

Understanding me, it was hard for me to study, read, along with organizing my thoughts for me to study. I never had any reading secret formula other than just doing it all at the last minute. While reading, I had difficult habits to get rid of while working on school work such as, listening to music, Facebook, and even sitting in front of the TV. It was tough for me to keep my grades up while getting distracted with my bad habits. I took a class called Language and Literacy Education to help me get away from my habits. First, I was introduced the Reading Secret formula: Remove Distractions, Set a purpose, adjust Your Pace, Take Notes, Stop when You’re Confused, and Set Aside Time to Read. The top two that gave me problems were remove distractions, and set aside time to read. I was either watching TV, on Facebook, or listening to music, and then working late at night. Then I learn how to FLIRT while reading, DRIVE while reading, and RELAX while reading. At first this all sounded confusing to me, because it seemed there were a lot of steps to do just for studying, taking notes, or just reading. After either doing those strategies, there are six different ways to keep my notes organized. They are, Enumeration: to list or identify facts, parts, or categories in any order. Second, Description: to give information about a topic, person, or animal. Third, Compare and Contrast: to point out how two topics are the same or different. Fourth, Sequence: to tell about a specific order of events or steps in a process. Fifth, Cause and Effect: to explain why or how something happened. Last, Problem and Solution: to describe a problem and what was done to solve it. Also with them using different Graphics to organize your notes.

After learning all of these strategies, it took awhile for me to find myself and get the hang of them, and I established changes by practicing all the time. The times when I read just for fun, I practice first by removing distractions, and sitting in a room that is quite for me to focus. I wasn’t good at setting aside time, so I made up a radical routine for myself to follow. It included my schedule of courses, basketball practices, and putting my study time during the time I am free. During my studying and reading time I practice flirt the most. I thought it was easy to follow and organize my thought easier. As the semester is flying by and me changing my habits, school has been getting easier for me to understand and learning more than I did. My memory after studying reading has been increasing overtime periods. I started studying really hard for twenty minutes and then giving my brain time to relax, and then go back at it. My grades have been staying high or at least a B range, and staying even with my goal at 3.0 GPA.

Now after I have learned and change to work on new strategies, I have been more mature about my school work and taking things more seriously. I will keep myself and my work organized and have a routine down. The great deal about it, is I will have fun and enjoy it, knowing that now I have different strategies to make it easy on myself by absorbing information in a healthy way. Going into next semester I plan on still using these skills to succeed in the classroom and most importantly in life.