Hi, and thanks for stopping by! It’s almost time for winter break at our school. For me, this means lots of projects and exams before school ends. Life is pretty hectic. This past week, I had a tricky situation that I wanted to share with you. It happened in my English class. Now, for those of you who remember, English is usually my most favorite subject. This year, it still is, but with a catch. You see, I don’t love my English teacher, Ms. S. She’s not as interesting or exciting as my amazing English teacher from last year.
On top of being kind of a serious teacher, Ms. S’s grammar tests are really hard. You have to know the material inside and out. On our first big test, a lot of kids in the class did poorly. (I definitely didn’t do as well as I’d hoped.) If it were up to me, we’d spend the whole school year focusing on reading books and doing tons of creative writing projects. But as for the grammar stuff? Meh. I could leave it. Even if it’s important to learn.
For our final grammar test before break, I needed to step up my studying. This brings me to the important life lesson I learned, thanks—but no thanks—to Ms. S: you can’t always rely on others when it comes to learning. You need to put in the work, especially when the work is hard. And hopefully, there are people—whether it’s teachers or others—who can help support your efforts.
Here’s what happened…
By the book
Let me start by telling you that Ms. S is a new teacher. Honestly, she doesn’t look like she’s much older than my sister. So, you think she’d be kind of cool, right? No. She doesn’t joke around at all.
Now, you might be saying, “Noodle, teachers are there to teach you things. Not to make you laugh or be silly.” But aren’t teachers supposed to make learning fun? And if you can’t have fun in English class of all places, where can you do it? (Other than maybe gym class, lunch, and recess.)
While we, of course, read books and have creative writing exercises, Ms. S is kind of a stickler for teaching what she calls the “fundamentals.” And boy, Ms. S sure takes the “fun” out of “fundamentals.” In other words, she spends a ton of time teaching us the least interesting parts of English. While there’s one part of me that knows we need to learn the fundamentals, I just wish we could spend ninety-nine percent of the time reading or writing.
I’m sure I could step up my studying if we only did grammar one percent of the time!
Feeling “tense”
Last week, we were knee-deep in a grammar lesson. Ms. S was throwing out things like compound sentences, helping verbs, prepositions, plus a few more things I won’t bore you with. Let me just say that all this grammar stuff was pretty tricky. There was a lot to remember.
To help us, Ms. S put together a study guide for the exam. Except her study guide wasn’t helpful at all! It made things even more confusing. I wasn’t the only one who thought so. A bunch of my classmates agreed—and not just my good friends who would back me up no matter what.
Even my big sister Jill, who is a few years older than me, said the study guide was unclear. And she took the same English class a few years. As much as I read and reread Ms. S’s study guide. Sadly, hardly anything was sticking.
The afternoon before the exam, I asked Jill to quiz me. I got almost all the questions wrong. It looked like I hadn’t studied at all.
I might even fail. Except that night at dinner, my mom overhead Jill teasing me about how badly I was going to do on the exam.
I was so annoyed at Jill. She didn’t need to make it known that I hadn’t actually stepped up my studying!
Hitting the books
Before I could get really irritated at Jill, my mom had a suggestion. She happens to be a teacher, so she knows a lot of school stuff. “Noodle, you might want to try making note cards to study or make up funny words or phrases to help you remember things better.” What if I didn’t use Ms. S’s study guide for the quiz?
My mom said to go with my gut. “You know what material you’ll be tested on, right?” I nodded. “But the teacher’s study guide isn’t helping you remember that material?” I nodded my head again. “Well then you need to come up with something else that will help you remember the material.” I didn’t have much time left to step up my studying…and my gut was saying that Ms. S’s study guide wasn’t the answer.
But ugh. That meant I had a lot more work ahead of me that night!
Still, my mom had a good point. I needed another option that made sense to my brain.
So, I spent the night making a new study guide. Talk about stepping up my studying! I don’t know what got into me, but I was on a mission to make a great study guide. I, of course, color-coded different sections so that the study guide looked amazing. And, it was chock-full of the grammar stuff I needed for the test. Best of all, the act of writing everything out in a way that I could remember helped me learn all the material for the quiz.
Given how fantastic my study guide for Ms. S’s class came out, I wondered if I could take that approach for when I had tests in other subjects too. That would be the perfect way to step up my studying across the boards!
I’m not going to lie. Making my study guide was a lot of work. But it was also a lot better than using the Ms. S’s unclear study guide. (Did I mention that she was not one of my favorite teachers?? I just didn’t want you to forget.)
As a reward for my hard work, my mom let me stay up a little bit later than normal. I was glad to decompress because my brain was about to explode from all that grammar. Was fifteen minutes of extra time before bed worth it for stepping up my studying? Absolutely. Though twenty minutes would’ve been even better.
Metaphors be with you
The morning of my English test, I was nervous. I couldn’t wait to get the exam over with. (Fun fact: ending a sentence with the word “with” is called “preposition stranding.”) Thankfully, I knew the material cold. It’s a shame that I spent so much time trying to use Ms. S’s unhelpful study guide. And being annoyed at her. Those were both big wastes of time.
As I learned the hard way, just complaining about a situation probably won’t change things. Especially when it comes to schoolwork. If something’s not working, you have to come up with another solution that does.
According to Jill, now that I’m in middle school, I’ve got to be the one to try and figure things out. Sure, I could ask for help, but there’s no substitute for making sense of things on your own terms.
In this case, Ms. S’s study guide wasn’t helping me. So, I needed to put in the extra work and make a “custom Noodle study guide.” And I’m glad I did. Because guess what? I aced the exam. I even showed Ms. S my study guide. She was totally impressed. I think she may have even cracked a tiny smile.
And maybe, just maybe, showing off my study guide was a nice way of telling Ms. S that her study guide was unclear. Perhaps she’ll “step up” her study guide next time around.
Stay tuned.
(1. Verb: “Stay” (the action of informing or making aware) | 2. Noun: “tuned” (person, place, or thing)
Hope you enjoyed your free grammar lesson. Ha ha!
Until next time, be your best you.
Do you have any stories about learning an important lesson from an experience? Please share them with me in the comments section!
