My Best Experiences

I haven't really had just one, single, best experience of my life so far. I can narrow it down to one time in my life where I had the best experience. That was when I went on a service trip to Costa Rica my junior year of high school. Now, I also consider passing my edTPA this past May, to be one of my best experiences too. What is ironic about passing the edTPA is, that leading up to that moment, I had one of the worst experiences of my life. Furthermore, both of these best experiences, did indeed include some of the worst experiences I have endured. Despite these experiences having some trailing moments, in the end, I wouldn't change anything.

The service trip to Costa Rica was very fulfilling. My classmates and I traveled to three different parts of Costa Rica. At the time, my Spanish was much better than it is now, so we got to talk to the locals, the local children, and our tour guide in both Spanish and English. We planted trees, we built a school and fixed a playground, and we got to explore the rainforest where I saw some of my favorite animals. To back track a bit, in the third grade, I did a "rainforest diorama." For this project, I had to pick an animal to present and then create their environment. My teacher let me pick two animals, I picked the Blue-Morpho Butterfly and a toucan. These are still two of my favorite creatures to date because of their beauty and habits. So, as we were exploring the rainforest in Costa Rica, we came across not only a Blue-Morpho Butterfly, but also a toucan! It was beyond amazing to see these breath-taking animals in person. Never did I think in the third grade that I would be in the same environment as these animals. Obviously, things were going too well for me! The next day, while planting the trees in the rainforest, I was bitten by "Costa Rican Red Fire Ants." I had a bad allergic reaction where my arm swelled up, I lost feeling in it, it was bright red, and I began to spike a fever- all in the matter of minutes! It was very scary, I was in a foreign country without my family, the nearest hospital was four hours away. Luckily, the locals gave me this coconut drink and I had remembered my anti-histamine bug bite cream, and a few hours later I was almost back to normal. Thus, my trip to Costa Rica was one of the best experiences of my life, but had some very bad moments. 

In regards to my other best experience, there was no better feeling than finding out I had passed the edTPA. At the same time, getting to this point was beyond torturous. I was overwhelmed every, single, day. Between student teaching, doing my work for that, and then also putting in so much effort  for a very excessive, tedious, trying "portfolio," I was at the edge of my rope most days of the week. It had seemed once I felt I had accomplished any dent in the edTPA, I was back to drowning in work and not even being close to the finish line. For my undergraduate program, I needed to submit the edTPA by a certain day in order to graduate. This date gave me more than enough time to complete it in one shot. However, it wouldn't give me enough time to re-do it, or file to attempt to do it again if I failed the first shot. Due to this, I gave myself an earlier deadline just in case. Which I didn't wind up having to do in the long-run but it gave me a bit more peace of mind that I had extra time to recover just in case. Although I had extra time to recover if I needed, now I had put even more pressure on myself to make sure I got it done early. Eventually, after many tears, days of giving up, and days of trying my hardest, I had received notification I had passed the edTPA. This was truly some of the best news I had ever received in my life. My dream was to become a teacher one day, and passing this exam officially made that happen. For that, I am thankful. 

Vocabulary Defined

Narrow- To limit

Ironic- To be the opposite of what you were expecting

Endured- To go through a challenging time

Fulfilling- To be satisfied in a happy way, to become happy from working through an experience

Diorama- A life-like model one makes as a project, usually representing a scene/environment

Allergic-Reaction- To have a bad response to something due to being allergic

Spike- To begin to have quickly

Anti-Histamine- A topical solution in my case, which reverses the effects of an allergic reaction

edTPA- A teacher certification exam

Torturous- Very hard, trying, miserable

Overwhelmed- To feel like you have way too much going on at one time

Tedious- Long, tiring

Dent- Get enough done

Deadline- A due date

Recover- To come back from, to fix

Vocabulary Exercises

1. Write a sentence using the word overwhelmed. 

                                                                                                                                                                     

2. Which words would fit best in the blanks in the following sentence?

"The was given to me in order to help                                    me recover from my                               .  My eyes got so swollen and red!"

3. Which word matches/fits the following description: I went through a hard experience and persevered in the end. 

Grammar Point Defined

Personal Pronouns

• I/Me
• You/You
• He/Him
• She/Her
• We/Us
• They/them

Grammar Point Exercise

1. Identify 5 cases of when I used personal pronouns in the passage above. 

2. Create 3 sentences using 3 different personal pronouns.

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