Out of the Box by Ashanti

Out of the Box by Ashanti - July 2016 Scholarship Essay

When I entered the eighth grade I changed schools after my family relocated and I was in awe. Many of the classes were taught in trailers and the high school was also the middle school. I came from a very tough high school and this new environment was very much so different. I became one to the top students in my class. Had it not been for my eighth grade Georgia history teacher I would have doubted my true abilities for a very long time. Coming from a school that was academically challenging I doubted my true intelligence.
I entered my first Georgia history class and was excited because it was very laid back and the teacher was as essay going as anyone could have imagined. Every morning he would assign us vocabulary. Before his class I loved doing it because it was thoughtless work. All you had to do was copy the definition from a book. But Mr. Beasley knew that wasn’t learning. So, He would give us vocabulary words and we were not allowed to use any source but our heads to define the words. He would also have us do current events. But, his challenge was that we could only summarize the article in a single paragraph. The remainder of the assignment was a description of what we took away from reading the article after reading it. He made us utilize the knowledge we already had and to build on it.
Mr. Beasley took the traditional practice of teaching and he drew us in. Before I was a memorizing student, I could memorize all kinds of information shortly before an exam, quiz or assignment. But, Mr. Beasley noticed that about his students and he spent the entire semester braking down the boxes of the wall he thought we all lived in. When Mr. Beasley taught me these great learning habits I began to step back and look at things with a greater amount of detail. Mr. Beasley made us think rather than just keeping us busy and noise free. He had discussions that helped us not only learn to be comfortable voicing our opinions but also retaining knowledge. He wasn’t a difficult teacher and never made things hard for us. But he did make us think outside of just what a book or a news article had to offer.