Ashley’s Writing Journey

Struggling to Write Once upon a time there was a little girl Ashley.

She was in the fourth grade at Sharon

Elementary School. Like every other fourth

grader, she was learning how to write a

narrative for the writing test. She struggled

while learning, as the teacher could not

really make Ashley’s imagination any

different than it was, but she managed to

make it through. Ashley was just not very

good at making a story up with her

imagination. She took the writing test in

March of 2004; the writing test prompt was “You

just got off the bus at home, write about what

happened.” Ashley had no clue what to write, not

anything that would be interesting anyway.

Ashley remembered everything that Mrs. Keaton

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had taught as she wrote the five-paragraph

narrative, but didn’t make what she had planned

on making; she had barely managed to pass. She

had made a 12, the lowest possible passing score.

Ashley felt so discouraged as she walked out of

the room with her head down, smile frowned; she

just knew that she would never be good enough.

She knew that she wanted to do better, but she

just didn’t know if it was actually possible to do

better. As the years went by, Ashley learned

different ways to write but never became an

expert.

When Ashley entered seventh grade at

West Iredell Middle School, she decided to take

“Advanced English”, and she and her family

thought that her writing would definitely

improve. The word "Advanced" made Ashley feel

so smart, and she loved every time someone

would ask her what her schedule was at school.

She would perk up and begin spouting off all of

her classes, while trying to not grin really big

when she said “Advanced English.” Ashley

succeeded in the class, but when it came to the

writing test, she did not do so well. She ended up

making the same score she did in fourth grade.

By this time, Ashley was very discouraged. People

in her class were making the highest score that

you can make, while she barely passed. “You will

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improve soon enough baby!” her mom would say.

She kept the faith in herself while continuing to

try and improve her scores and grades. She

started to stay after school twice a week for an

hour to go over different readings to get help and

tutoring on her writing skills, just keeping the

hope that eventually things would get better.

Ashley kept that hope until her tenth grade

writing test.

Will It Get Better?

Ashley was now a student at West Iredell High

School. She was in honors English and had one of

the brightest teachers on the campus, Mr. Cook. If

anybody would push her or could help improve

her skills it was Mr. Cook.  Ashley’s mom had told

her how smart Mr. Cook was. They went to high

school together; then, he graduated as the

valedictorian in their senior class. He also pursued

his education at Duke, where he was in the Beta Club.

Since Mr. Cook was so intelligent, Ashley thought

that she would learn a lot from him.

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This was the first time she was eager to

enter the doors of an English class. Ashley wrote

many papers in this class, whether it was an

essay, a book report, or a “free-write” journal

entry.  “Today you will be

writing for thirty minutes

about an ethical situation in

the world and describe how

you feel about the situation,”

said Mr. Cook on the first day

the class wrote a journal entry. “This is going to

be a piece of cake!” thought Ashley, and her

grade of a 100 showed her that it was, so she

thought. They would write in this class at least once a

day, for a thirty-minute minimum. If they were not

writing an essay or book report that day, they

would just do a journal entry and talk about

whatever they wanted to. She just knew that this

would improve her writing score and she would

finally be satisfied. Did the journal entries and

grades of at least 95 or above actually help?

Yet, when the writing test came around, she made a

twelve again!

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After taking three different writing tests

throughout the six years, she was beyond

discouraged and did not think that she would

ever be a good writer.  Ashley decided to take the

SAT at the end of her sophomore year hoping

that she could get a good feel for how hard the

test would be.

As she walked into the cafeteria and saw

everyone spaced out looking scared, she began to

panic as her palms sweated. Once she sat down

in the hard, plastic, blue cafeteria seats her mind

started racing and her palms were sweating.

“What if I don’t know what to write about for this

topic?” thought Ashley. “What if I don’t make a

good enough score, once again?” “I’ve tried the

hardest I can, hopefully it will pay off this

time....” She scored a 410. “Maybe I will do

better next year if I keep working hard…”

thought Ashley, even though this was very

heartbreaking. The only rule of measure Ashley

ever really had was the score that she received

on the writing. She never really knew if she was

improving. I mean, who says if you’re a good

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writer or not? The power of the tests was the only

thing telling Ashley if she was succeeding or not.

One Last Try

Ashley’s junior year, she decided that she was

going to

take AP

English.

Everything

she had

heard from

other

students indicated that this was a tough class but

would help her writing skills and prepare her for

college. The first day of class the teacher told the

students what kind of assignments they would be

having throughout the year and told them about

the AP exam at the end of the year. “There will be

a multiple choice section and you will be writing

three essays for the exam,” said Mrs. Ramsey,

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Ashley’s English teacher. Ashley’s face dropped.

She just knew she would fail the exam and this

whole year was going to be suicide. “I’ve never

been good at writing, and have not succeeded

how I want to all of these years, and now I am

going to be dealing with it again,” thought

Ashley.

When Mrs.

Ramsey began to

show how to write

the first essay, she

would write an

example and show it

on the overhead. Mrs. Ramsey would write out

step by step how to write the essay. “For the

introduction you need to include this, this and this...

The body paragraphs should have this... The

conclusion should have this…” she would say. She

would tell them exactly what was needed to be in

each paragraph for every essay that they learned

how to write. “She makes it look so easy,”

thought Ashley. This first essay type was

argumentative.

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When Ashley got her first essay prompt

she was so nervous because she thought she was

going to fail miserably at it. She wrote the paper

the best she could; she would look at the notes

she used from Mrs. Ramsey’s example and follow

the steps. When Mrs. Ramsey graded the papers

and handed them out, Ashley was very surprised

to find out that she had made a “6”, which was an

85. The highest score you could make was a “9”.

This made Ashley want to jump with joy; this was

way above almost passing! She had been used to

making the bare minimum, and now she was way

above that! Being able to use the notes from Mrs.

Ramsey’s example after being shown how to do

it, then repeating it with different prompts really

helped Ashley to learn how to write efficiently

and make good grades. As Ashley wrote more

essays of this type, she kept an average of about

6.5. She scored “6” and “7” on every essay that

she wrote.

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They learned two more types of essays in

that class; synthesis and prose analysis. As with

argumentative, Mrs. Ramsey would show them

the structure of each different kind of essay. She

would show the students exactly how to do it,

which helped them all to succeed while writing

their own. Ashley still did about the same on

those two types of essays; she was so proud of

herself! She took the AP exam and became even

more confident when she found out that she had

made a 3 and passed the exam. Mrs. Ramsey did

something different than all of the other teachers

Ashley had in the past when it came to teaching

her how to write. Mrs. Ramsey actually showed

the students how to set up the different kinds of

essays, and showed the students how to write it

out. She didn’t just show them examples and say,

“Okay, this is how you do it”; she actually took

the time to show them.

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           The May of her junior year, Ashley went

to take the SAT.  She was not nervous at all after

the confidence her AP English class had given her

on her writing. Ashley began to remember all of

the long nights and class periods she had spent

writing until her hands were sore and cramping.

She had flashbacks of listening to all the tips and

skills her teacher had taught her to prepare for

this moment. She went into the testing site with

her head held high, and whenever she got the

results back she realized that all of her hard work

had really paid off. She had improved by 180

points. She felt so confident! When Ashley found

out her score, she called her mom into the room

to tell her the news. “Look mom! I improved so

much, Mrs. Ramsey’s class really helped!” she

screamed ecstatically!

“Good job baby girl, I told

you that you could do it..

You just had to put your

mind to it!” said her

mom as she squeezed

her tight and hugged

her like she was never

going to let go. Now

she actually knew how to figure things out. It was

like an unraveled mystery.

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