P. S. 5: My Childhood Experience In The Classroom

Imagine a classroom environment that is chaotic, full of noisy students engaged in "playtime" for the majority of their day. This is my earliest recollection of my kindergarten experience at Public School 5 in Brooklyn, New York. P.S. 5 is located in the Bedford Stuyvestant section of Brooklyn, which at the time, was a neighborhood comprised mostly of African-American families. Community School District 16, where P.S. 5 has always been considered a low performing district and according to the website Schooldigger.com, currently ranks 684 out New York State's 752 school districts. Wanting more academic opportunities for their children, my parents provided resources for my sister and I to be successful in school, an encyclopedia set, magazines and plenty of books. However, they felt our neighborhood schools did not
Kaplan, to be the most influential. Mr. Kaplan commanded order and respect within his classroom. He was stern when necessary, but fair and held high expectations for his students. Having taught my sister two years prior, Mr. Kaplan had already established a line of communication with my parents, making it easy to inform them regularly of my academic progress and areas in need of improvement, usually math. Junior high school was a different story. Leaving the nurturing environment of elementary school, I found myself in a larger school with few students I knew and far more that I did not. Familiarizing myself with new teachers and their teaching styles, traveling from class to class and taking public transportation was quite an adjustment. Feeling overwhelmed, my grades suffered the first marking period of my seventh grade year. Fearful of how I would be perceived by my peers, I rarely sought assistance from my teachers regarding content and that contributed to my receiving my first failing