Personal Narrative: My Visit To KIPP Academy Middle School
I came to KIPP during the middle of my 8th grade year. From the moment I stepped foot into KIPP Academy Middle School, I absolutely hated it. I was used to something completely different to what I had just arrived to: from the school size, the students, and the teachers. I felt like I was in a whole different world. Moving to KIPP was one of the biggest changes my 13-year-old self had gone through. I came from a relatively big school composed of only 7th and 8th graders to a school with only 2 hallways for 4 grade levels. The school was so small, I felt trapped with nowhere to go. I arrived at KIPP with a whole different mindset than most students here. Most of my classmates had been having a college-prep education since elementary school, while college hadn’t even crossed my mind yet. I had been exposed to drugs and violence from where I came and everyone at KIPP still seemed so naive. I didn’t feel like I belonged with the rest of my classmates, so I spent most of the year isolated from the rest. I was so pessimistic and failed to realize that this change was for the better. For more than a
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year I begged my mom to let me change schools. All I was worried about was going to school with my old friends and having fun. The only thing I looked forward to was for the week to end and the weekend to arrive. I would go out and party with my friends completely forgetting KIPP existed. However, monday would then come again and I would go back to my reality: homework packets every night, longer school days, a lack of freedom. I wasn’t used to the KIPP life, so I became highly overwhelmed and my frustration grew stronger each day.
When I started high school, things got a little better but my attitude towards KIPP remained the same.
I showed no interest in what was going in the school; I was so focused on the negatives that I failed to see the positives. That was up until around the middle of my sophomore year. Ever since I moved to KIPP, I envied my old friends. I was always aware of what they were doing at their school pondering on how lucky they were. It turns out, though, that the lucky one was me. As I witnessed some of the people I grew up with starting to give up on school and dropout, I realized how lucky I was to be getting the support I was given at KIPP and encouraged to go to college. Before enrolling to this school, I had no clue what a GPA or the ACT was. Yes, coming to KIPP is a bigger challenge than being at the average public school, but it has helped me set a better future for
myself.
year I begged my mom to let me change schools. All I was worried about was going to school with my old friends and having fun. The only thing I looked forward to was for the week to end and the weekend to arrive. I would go out and party with my friends completely forgetting KIPP existed. However, monday would then come again and I would go back to my reality: homework packets every night, longer school days, a lack of freedom. I wasn’t used to the KIPP life, so I became highly overwhelmed and my frustration grew stronger each day.
When I started high school, things got a little better but my attitude towards KIPP remained the same.
I showed no interest in what was going in the school; I was so focused on the negatives that I failed to see the positives. That was up until around the middle of my sophomore year. Ever since I moved to KIPP, I envied my old friends. I was always aware of what they were doing at their school pondering on how lucky they were. It turns out, though, that the lucky one was me. As I witnessed some of the people I grew up with starting to give up on school and dropout, I realized how lucky I was to be getting the support I was given at KIPP and encouraged to go to college. Before enrolling to this school, I had no clue what a GPA or the ACT was. Yes, coming to KIPP is a bigger challenge than being at the average public school, but it has helped me set a better future for
myself.