Dear Mrs.

Hoffman, The past few months have been quite a transition for me having come from Buffalo, New York, all the way the Charlotte, North Carolina not knowing anyone. I feel though like you English class has helped me transition. The class discussions that we have help create an open atmosphere in the classroom. I have not missed a class yet, which has definitely helped me. Being in class, and being prepared was one of my goals when I first started school. I feel as though the things that we discuss in class are very constructive and helpful regarding the work that we do outside. Personally I feel like I am actively participating in class, be it in our small groups or in front of the class as a whole. One of the parts that I find to be very beneficial about this class is our small groups. I really enjoy my group in particular because there are five girls, Adrianna, Callie, Kirsten, and Suzana, but we all have very different personalities, experiences, and writing styles. All of our differences allows for great feedback. My group works well together, and we have actually all become friends outside of class because of it. We all feel very comfortable discussing our thoughts openly. I feel like I contribute a good amount to my small group discussions. When reading papers, and critiquing them, I try and be open minded while also critical of the content. When we split up to discuss a topic from class, I typically will have a lot to say on it. I feel like I am this way in class as well. I find that I can relate and give a lot of perspective in class discussions with the topics we are given. For instance in regards dialects, and different languages, living out of state has given me a slight advantage. Also recently having talked about waitressing, I have been able to input my opinion based off of my own experience waitressing. I feel like I have good insight into our class discussions which helps the collective conversation.

Every so often we will take the first few minute of class to write a little on a prompt that is given to us. The first one that we had done, happens to be my favorite.
Michaela McDonald 8-28-13 Write An all new school, with all new friends, and all new teachers. To make this even more nerve racking, it was my first day of high school. I had gone through the entire day, with the occasional mishap here and there, but nothing utterly traumatic. I did not make any new best friends, and I was not drawn to any of my new teachers, that was until my last period class. I walk into my last class of the day with a sigh of relief. I sit down in my chair with a stranger in front of me, a stranger on each side of me, and even a stranger behind me. In waltzs this beautiful, petite, teacher with short curly hair and a smile so natural you couldnt help but smile along with her. This was my new favorite teacher, Miss. Eddy. She handed out a sheet of paper to each one of us with such delicate grace. She told us that although some of us may have already had all of our supplies and brought our notebooks to class, she did not want anyone to be singled out if they hadnt, which is why she decided to have us write on loose leaf. She walked to the front of the class room and simply told us, You have twenty minutes; write! All of us sort of just looked around for a bit and then one by one we began to put our pencils on the page. English

Here we were asked to talk about a teacher that had affected us in some kind of way. Miss. Eddy was not my hardest grader, nor did I learn the most from her, but she is the reason that I now love to write. She gave us freedom, but also guidance when needed. She told us to write about anything! Write a story. Write about feelings. Write about princesses. Whatever it is you want to write about does not quite matter, just simply write. This year in particular has been different for me, because we do have a decent amount of leeway on what we talk about. We will be given

prompts, but we are on our own from there. Another thing that is different for me is writing directly in the computer. I normally will have a notebook for class notes, and any opening class prompts. I do not mind putting my writings directly into my laptop though, because I do feel more organized. It is because of the organization that I feel I have been doing well in this course. I have not been procrastinating, and I have been really getting into the readings that we are assigned. Other than one time when I saved a document in the wrong folder, I have been doing well with all of the assignments and the submissions. Personally I really enjoyed the article that we had to read about the concept of woman talking too much. I really loved this topic, and I also enjoyed the discussion afterwards in regards to it. While we were in our small groups with others who read the article it was interesting watching our group convers. The first two people to say anything in our group were ironically the boys. The class discussions following meeting with our small groups were also interesting seeing others opinions on the topic. I appreciate other views and stand points on topics which is why I really liked this topic. Writing my Inquiry into Language, Literacy, and Identity was an interesting process. I had to reflect on how I came to be the person that I am influenced my language and literacy. I feel like being from Buffalo, New York, is always something that will distinguish me from others. When in Buffalo though, I feel like having gone to Nardin Academy for high school, and the experiences that I had there is what will distinguish me from others. Based off of my comments from my peer group, the most interesting part of my paper is the part where I talk about my high school. I having been working to make that section in particular better. I did not really receive any comments from you though, due to my mishap with submitting the wrong

cover letter. I have been working though based off my peers comments to revise my paper, but I still feel like it needs more. Using an online portfolio is something that I am unfamiliar to, but it seems to be a very efficient way to present your work. I have played around with the different pages, but have yet to really start inserting my work. I am the kind of person that likes when things are different and original, so I have been trying to figure out ways to do that. I would like my portfolio page to be something that I am proud of, and something that I enjoy going through. I also would like it to be something that I can refer back to and possibly add more works to it. I feel like having an online portfolio is a great way to get your work out into the open while also giving some insight into who you are. Finishing this semester off strong is an obvious goal of hopefully everyone. Something that I would really like to do though is produce a piece of work that I absolutely love. I want to work on a paper, and critique it to the bone. I want to become engulfed in a paper so much that I do not even want to stop writing it. I want to write a paper that I want to share with everyone. This paper does not have to be an assignment. I just simply want to pour my thoughts out on a page, and have it truly mean something to me.
Sincerely, Michaela McDonald