What I Learned at School

In What I Learned at School the author talks about a specific case in which a teacher helped her most in life. The article starts off mentioning the large budget cuts that have been affecting schools and their teachers recently. She then goes on to talk about how as a columnist she regularly receives reader feedback, but recently received something she was not expecting. It was a letter from the teacher who had an enormous impact on her life. After sharing what the letter said the article then cuts back to when the author was in this teachers class, and the large roll this specific teacher had on her life.

When I was first going through articles to find one that inspires me I was having trouble. As a future journalist I’m not really interested in things that are considered to be hard news. I want to write more feature-y human-interest types of articles. My major is magazine journalism, and I want to write about people that are different, or people that are making a difference. People that are considered “average joes” but yet are making the world a better place. Writing about the economy, or the biggest celebrity scandal is not what I want to be writing about for the rest of my life.

That is what led me to this article. I know it is an article that is largely opinionated, and that made me nervous in choosing this one to write about. …Especially since it is our first one. The reason I was drawn to it is because of how personal it is, and how it draws attention to the current issue of budget cuts that are affecting teachers everywhere. I think this article is also easy to relate to. I feel that everyone has one experience in school where a teacher did something causing a large impact on their life, maybe just during the moment, or maybe for a lifetime.

I don’t know if this story would have much of an effect on those who read it. Though I think it is an easy piece of writing to relate to, it is not about a significant or world news type of topic. For those of the readers who do read this article and connect with it I think it gives a sentimental type of feeling.

The author of this article is Marie Myung-Ok Lee. She is a Korean American writer who has written three young adult novels and has had her essays appear in Newsweek, the New York Times, and other newspapers.  She is a graduate from Brown University, where she now teaches creative writing.

If I were the author of this story I think I would have kept it just as she did.  Since it is about her personal experience it is hard for me to imagine writing it instead. The only think I might have done more of was connecting it to the real world issue of budget cuts a little more. This would have made it a little more powerful in affecting peoples views on the issue.

I like stories like this because it lets you see into someone else’s life for a few minutes. I like when you feel like you relate to someone just by reading something that they wrote.  I also enjoyed this story because It shows that the author’s work was being admired by someone she hadn’t had contact with for a long time. I hope that once I’m established in a career I could write something and get feedback like that. It would definitely mean a lot.