Ashley Summer Mills Dr. Horton

English 1101 December 7, 2011

English 1101 Final Portfolio Project Title

Table of Contents

Analytical Cover Letter ....................................................................................................................1

Quality Comparison .........................................................................................................................4

Least Successful Article Response ......................................................................................5

Most Successful Article Response .......................................................................................7

“What’s the Difference?” .....................................................................................................9

Revision Samples ...........................................................................................................................11

Least Successful Article Response (with markup) ............................................................12

Least Successful Article Response (final) .........................................................................14

Most Successful Article Response (with markup) .............................................................16

Most Successful Article Response (final) ..........................................................................18

Most Successful Essay (with markup) ...............................................................................20

Most Successful Essay (final) ............................................................................................25

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June 30, 2010 Matthew R. Horton, Ph. D. Assistant Professor of English Gainesville State College Oconee Campus 313b Oconee Classroom 1201 Bishop Farms Parkway Watkinsville, GA 30677 Dear Dr. Horton, My name is Ashley Summer Mills and I am a freshman at Gainesville State College. This semester I was enrolled to English 1101. When I first found out that I was in English 1101 I honestly thought well that will be one of my easier classes. I believed that because ever since I was in elementary school I have had an English class so there was not much more I could learn. Well, boy was I wrong. This English class was unlike any that I had ever had before. The first day of class I thought to myself this is going to be awful, but by the end of the semester it became one of my favorite classes. I learned a lot of computer skills that I had no idea about. In this class we never turned anything in on paper, everything we did was online. I thought this would be a pain, but I enjoyed the different creative ways we did this. I learned about blogging and how to properly write an article response. Before this class I have never even heard of an article response and now that I have finished the class I feel like I have a good idea of how to accomplish one. This is my final portfolio and I think you will enjoy seeing my progress I have made of the months that I was in the class just as much as I did. I have learned so much about writing that I never knew before. I always thought writing about myself was a bad thing to do, but in this class all of our essays were related to us. We got to actually write about events that happened in our life. After turning being in this class I believe I have made some good changes to my essays though. We also became experts (well not exactly) on writing article responses. The difference in my first article response and my last article response is amazing. I have grown as a writer so much and this portfolio is proof. My first piece of work in this portfolio is my least successful article response. This article response got 4 out of 10 for a grade. This is not the reason though that I picked this as my least successful article response. Part of the reason for it getting a 4 is because I turned it in late, but I still believe with it being on time it would not have gotten much higher of a grade. This was the first article response I had ever written in my life. I was completely clueless on how to even get started. I remember sitting at my table telling my daddy I have no idea what to write about, but I began to write. When I was finished I thought to myself this is pretty good I should get a good grade. Now that I have looked back at my article response and re-read it I did not deserve a good grade at all. Both of paragraphs really did not follow the instructions we were given. I got off topic really bad and kind of just rambled on and on about the same stuff. My grammar was also bad. In this portfolio I have provided the article response revised to show how I have grown in my skills. My second piece of work I provided you in this portfolio is my most successful article response. This article response received 8 out of 10, which proves that it was not perfect. There are still thing I needed to work on to make this article response a better piece of work. In this

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portfolio I have also attached a revised form of my article response. Although this article response was my most successful there were still things I needed to make changes too. I believe for the most part I got the concept of the response down in this one. I followed directions on my first and second paragraph. The things I changed the most in the article response is grammar mistakes. I tend to have a lot of grammar mistakes, but going through this class I believe I have learned a lot on how to fix these things. This article response was seemed to be easier to me because it was the third one we did. After having practice and getting criticism from my last ones I felt like I really knew what to in this article response. It was also easier to me because I got to pick the article out that I wrote my response on. This made it easier because I was really interested in the information provided from this article. After revising this article response I believe it could be a really good one and I hope you think so too. My last piece of work I provided in this portfolio was my most successful article essay. For this essay we were supposed to get an idea from an article and spin it off into something that happened in our life or that we could relate too. This was my second essay I wrote in the class. My first essay was about a very personal experience so I figured that I would do better on that one, but I believe after having practice I did better on my second essay. This essay is about a young adult named Lance that I met and how he made me decide to be a special education teacher. Although this was also a personal experience I had a lot of trouble coming up with my thesis and topic sentences. After getting my essay back and getting criticism about it the essay I believe that I made a lot of good changes to the essay. I changed my thesis and my topic sentences to make the essay better. I feel like my new thesis sentence fit better with the body of paragraph. At first it did not really explain it good detail what my essay was going to be about, but after I changed my thesis it did. I also fixed many mistakes I made in my grammar and completely changed sentences to make them sound more intelligent. I hope you enjoy my revised essay and see the effort I put into the essay to make it better. Going through this class I have learned that the thing I need to work on the most is my grammar. While I was in high school all of my English teachers cared more about the content in our papers than the actual grammar. I believe that hurt me in the long run. Of course, while I was in high school I liked it because I knew my grammar needed work so I was happy when they did not pay much attention to it. Now if I could go back to high school I would wish that my teachers helped me with my grammar because that is what has gave me the most trouble in this class. I know all of the basics to grammar, but the more complicated rules are what give me trouble. If I could go back and just have a class on learning all the rules of grammar and practicing them while writing I would. Something like that would help me tremendously. I have set a goal for myself to work on my grammar. I plan to go back and relearn all of the rules and do some practice. I then want teachers and friends to proof read and see how I am getting better with my grammar. I do believe in this portfolio you can see some proof of how my grammar has improved throughout this class. Even if it is not with placing commas right, but just making my sentences sound more intelligent. I believe that is a big step you need to make when entering college. I plan to achieve my goal I have set before my next English class to become a better writer. I believe I have progressed a lot in this class. At the beginning of the semester I was having a lot of problems with my writing and not getting very good grades. At the end of the semester my grades began to rise and it made me very happy. I was making low C’s on almost everything I did, but when I received a B on my research paper I jumped up and down and just went around telling everyone. I realize that making good grades does make me very happy

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because it shows me that I have accomplished mainly what I was supposed to be doing. After getting better with my writing I felt very proud of myself. For this portfolio I believe I deserve a decent grade around a high B. Even though I could sit here and ask for an A so that my grade would come up to a B average in the class I know that my work is not perfect. I do believe though that I have showed off very well what I have learned in the class. I have progressed to being a better writer. At the end of this class I am planning on coming out with a C average. Of course, this does not make me (or my parents) very happy, but to be passing is all I am shooting for at this point. This was my first semester in college so it does take some getting use to and I have also learned in this class that you have to put everything you have into everything you do. I told myself with my research project that I would do the absolute best I could do and I ended up making my first B in the class. So with this portfolio I have also told myself the same thing I have done the absolute best I believe I can do and this is it. I hope you enjoy seeing my progress as much as I have enjoyed it myself.

Sincerely,

Ashley S Mills

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Least Successful Article Response

Will we ever find a cure to this disease?

Berry, Wendell. “Faustian Economics: Hell Hath No Limits.” Harper’s Magazine. The Harper's

Magazine Foundation, May 2008. Web. 31 Dec. 2009.

In this article the author is trying to get us humans to see that we are very greedy and live

a limitless life. "The problem with us is not only prodigal extravagance but also an assumed

limitlessness." As the author calls us limitless he is stating that in our minds we think everything

we have will be there forever. This is not the case, one day everything we depend on could be

gone. No one thinks about things in that point of view, all they think about is what they have

now. "But once greed has been made an honorable motive, then you have an economy without

limits." The author goes on to state about how we are greedy. He uses the situation where

americans want us to use the coal that we have in our country to prove how we are greedy.

People are just thinking about how prices would go down for the time being, but not about how

we would use it all and then if a crisis happened we would not have anymore.

This article should really make people think about they way we live our lifes. If we keep

going on living the way most people in America do we are all going to end up being

dissapointed. All this stuff we depend on and love is going to run out and then we are not going

to know what to do. Greediness is not going to get anyone anywhere in life. At some point we

have to stop thinking about only ourselves and think about our world and what we are doing to it.

As the author stated in the article it is like we have a disease and to cure this disease we need to

stop thinking we are godlike animals. We need to make the most of everything we have in order

to get rid of this disease. He believes that the importance of technology needs to transfer to the

arts. " For an art does not propose to enlarge itself by limitless extension but rather to enrich

6

itself within bounds that are accepted prior to the work." Maybe if we take into consideration

what this author is saying we can cure this awful disease we have

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Most Successful Article Response

I only asked for one baby not two!

Padawer, Ruth. "The Two-Minus-One Pregnancy." The New York Times. The New York Times

Company, August 2011. Web. 9 Sept. 2011.

In this article the author, Ruth Padawer, talks about women who get pregnant through

fertility and reduce the babies down to only one. When working with fertility drugs, women most

often become pregnant with multiple babies. Padawer interviews many women in this article

who decided on the two-to-one procedure. She finds out what made them decide to get rid of the

other baby and how they went about it. She believes that twin reduction is wrong. Is twin

reduction worse than abortion? This is the point she is trying to make in the article. "Even some

people who support abortion rights admit to feeling queasy about reduction to a singleton,"

author Ruth Pawader states. Later in the article she states how some people actually decide

which twin to kill by the gender. Some moms do not want anything to do with the decision on

which one to keep. Ruth asks "Is this because they feel guilty?" Dr. Richard Berkowitz ask,“In a

society where women can terminate a single pregnancy for any reason — financial, social,

emotional — if we have a way to reduce a twin pregnancy with very little risk, isn’t it legitimate

to offer that service to women with twins who want to reduce to a singleton?”

Pregnancy with fertility is becoming more common in the United States. This is making

the twin reduction percentage increase as well. In twin reduction women, who knew the

posibilities of getting pregnant with twins, decide to kill one of the babies so their left with just

one. "Last year, by comparison, 61 of the center’s 101 reductions were to a singleton, and 38 of

those pregnancies started as twins. That shift has made some doctors in the field uneasy, and

many who perform pregnancy reductions refuse to go below twins," states author Ruth Pawader.

8

If doctors are becoming uneasy about the reduction something must be wrong with it. In one of

the interviews a woman has a reduction, because one of the twins had down sydrome and she did

not want to be responsible for a kid with a problem like that. She understands that is sounded

selfish, but she seemed to think it would help the baby out by not having to go throught the

emotional and phyical problems later in life. Another woman simply had a reduction, because

she only wanted one baby and did not think she could handle two. So is there a difference in the

two situations or are both wrong?

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What’s the difference?

In my most successful article response I read the article, “The Two-Minus-One

Pregnancy.” This article was about women who get pregnant with twins and reduce the twins

down to one baby. In my first paragraph I talk about the point of view that the author has. I

explain how the author believes that having a twin reduction is wrong. She believes if the women

get pregnant with fertility drugs they know the risks of becoming pregnant with multiples so they

should not be able to reduce. In the second paragraph I talk about how this point of view is

culturally significant. I talk about how the author explains how a twin reduction can be

considered worse than having an abortion because most of the time when you have an abortion it

is because you accidently became pregnant. When having a twin reduction these women became

pregnant on purpose with fertility drugs. Of course, this subject will always be debated because

is so morally involved.

In my least successful article response I read the article, “Hell Hath no Limits.” In this

article the author talks about how Americans live a very limitless life because we think

everything we have will be here forever. In my first paragraph I talk about the view point of the

author. He is trying to get people to see just how greedy we are and that we need to make a

change. In my second paragraph I talk about how the author’s point of view is culturally

significant. If we do not put a change to how we are living in the future the world is going to

continue to go down hill. The economy is horrible right now and this is our own fault. More stuff

like this will continue to happen if we do not change our ways.

Looking back at both of these article responses I learned more about what it

actually means to write about the author’s point of view and how they are culturally significant. I

would honestly say the main difference in these two article responses is I did not quite

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understand the “Hell Hath no Limit” article. This article was given to us by Dr. Horton. I do

understand that in the future I will have to write about pieces of work that I did not pick out, but I

would say that is why I did not do so well on that response. When I actually get to pick out the

article is it something that I am very interested in so it is easier to write about. I would say in the

future if it is an article I do not understand I will need to read the article more than once to get as

much information as I can.

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Least Successful Article Response

Will we ever find a cure to this disease?

Berry, Wendell. “Faustian Economics: Hell Hath No Limits.” Harper’s Magazine. The Harper's

Magazine Foundation, May 2008. Web. 29 Aug. 2011. 31 Dec. 2009.

In this article, the author author, Wendell, is trying to get us humans to see that we are

very greedy and live a limitless life. At one point he states, "tThe problem with us is not only

prodigal extravagance but also an assumed limitlessness." When As Wendell the author calls us

limitless, he is stating that in our minds we think everything we have will be there forever. This

is not the case, one day everything we depend on could be gone. Nobody wants to think about

the future and what could happen to what they have now, they just enjoy their materials. No one

thinks about things in that point of view, all they think about is what they have now. "But once

greed has been made an honorable motive, then you have an economy without limits,." Wendell

states later in the article. The author Wendell goes on to talk about just how greedy we really

arestate about how we are greedy. He uses the situation where americansAmericans want us to

use the coal that we have in our country before buying it from other countriesto prove how we

are greedy. People are just thinking about how prices would go down for the time being, but not

about how we would use it all up in a few years and then if a crisis happened we would not have

anymore.

This article should really make people think about they way we live our lifeslives. If all

of us greedy people continue to live the way we are now this world will continue to go down hill.

If we keep going on living the way most people in America do we are all going to end up being

dissapointed. All this stuff we depend on and love is going to run out and then we are not going

to know what to do.will then blame other people for it, when in all actuality it will be our own

Formatted

Comment [GSC1]: I completely changed this sentence. The original sentence sounded a bit confusing to me after I re-read it. I do not think the readers really understood what I was trying to say without really thinking about it. We always want the response to be easy for the readers to comprehend. The new sentence makes a lot more since and explains things better. I believe I made a smart decision when I changed this sentence.

Comment [GSC2]: In this change I took out where I wrote about proving we are greedy. I just stated in the sentence before that the author gives us examples of how greedy we are so there was no need to restate in the next sentence. Instead, I replaced that phrase with information to help out the sentence. If I just left it with “… coal that we have in our country,” then people may say well one day we will have to. I wanted the readers to know I meant before we buy from other countries.

Comment [GSC3]: In this article a made a few spelling mistakes. These mistakes came from me just being careless and rushing. I also over looked them as I proof read the article response. I corrected all the spelling mistakes I made so that I sound more intelligent to the readers.

Comment [GSC4]: Once again I completely changed a sentence. This original sentence was just awful. It doesn’t really make good sense. It is also worded bad. I showed very bad writing skills in this sentence. So, when I changed the sentence I made it sound more intelligent. I changed words so that the readers could understand the point I was trying to make.

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fault. Greediness is not going to get anyone anywhere in life. At some point we have to stop

thinking about only ourselves and think about our world and what we are doing to it. As Wendell

the author stated in the article it is like we have a disease and to cure this disease we need to stop

thinking we are godlike animals. We need to make the most of everything we have in order to

get rid of this disease. He believes that the importance of technology needs to transfer to the arts.

Wendell states, " fFor an art does not propose to enlarge itself by limitless extension but rather to

enrich itself within bounds that are accepted prior to the work." Maybe if we take into

consideration what Wendell this author is saying we can cure this awful disease we have.

Comment [GSC5]: In this class was the first time I worked with quoting authors in a response. In this response I was just putting the quotes in without any explanation of who said it. So, I made the correction to the quotes several times in order for the readers to understand who is saying what.

Comment [GSC6]: While I was writing this article several time I mention the author and what he says. Instead of saying Wendell Berry (who is the author) I just put “the author”. I’ve learned that this is bad writing skills. If I actually use the authors name I sound like I know a lot about the article that I am writing about. We always want our readers to think we are very intelligent. I made this correction 3 times.

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Least Successful Article Response

Will we ever find a cure to this disease?

Berry, Wendell. “Faustian Economics: Hell Hath No Limits.” Harper’s Magazine. The Harper's

Magazine Foundation, May 2008. Web. 29 Aug. 2011.

In this article, the author, Wendell, is trying to get us humans to see that we are very

greedy and live a limitless life. At one point he states, "the problem with us is not only prodigal

extravagance but also an assumed limitlessness." When Wendell calls us limitless, he is stating

that we think everything we have will be there forever. This is not the case, one day everything

we depend on could be gone. Nobody wants to think about the future and what could happen to

what they have now, they just enjoy their materials. "But once greed has been made an honorable

motive, then you have an economy without limits," Wendell states later in the article. Wendell

goes on to talk about just how greedy we really are. He uses the situation where Americans want

us to use the coal that we have in our country before buying it from other countries. People are

just thinking about how prices would go down for the time being, but not about how we would

use it all up in a few years and then if a crisis happened we would not have anymore.

This article should really make people think about they way we live our lives. If all of us

greedy people continue to live the way we are now this world will continue to go down hill. All

this stuff we depend on and love is going to run out and then we will then blame other people for

it, when in all actuality it will be our own fault. Greediness is not going to get anyone anywhere

in life. At some point we have to stop thinking about only ourselves and think about our world

and what we are doing to it. As Wendell stated in the article it is like we have a disease and to

cure this disease we need to stop thinking we are godlike animals. We need to make the most of

everything we have in order to get rid of this disease. He believes that the importance of

15

technology needs to transfer to the arts. Wendell states, "for an art does not propose to enlarge

itself by limitless extension but rather to enrich itself within bounds that are accepted prior to the

work." Maybe if we take into consideration what Wendell is saying we can cure this awful

disease we have.

16

Most Successful Article Response

I only asked for one baby not two!

Padawer, Ruth. "The Two-Minus-One Pregnancy." The New York Times. The New York Times

Company, August 2011. Web. 9 Sept. 2011.

In this article the author, Ruth Padawer, talks about women who get pregnant through

fertility and reduce the twins babies down to only one baby. When working with fertility drugs,

women most oftenwill more than likely become pregnant with multiple babies. Padawer

interviews many women in this article who decided on the two-to-one procedure. She finds out

what made the womenm decide to get rid of the other baby and how they went about it. She

believes that twin reduction is wrong. Is twin reduction worse than abortion? This is the point

she is trying to make in the article. "Even some people who support abortion rights admit to

feeling queasy about reduction to a singleton," author Ruth Pawader states. She also reveals the

process that goes about with choosing which twin to kill and which to keep. First it comes down

to healthy or not. If one baby has health problems usually that will be they baby that they kill. If

both babies are healthy and the genders are different, the women can choose according to which

gender they want. If both babies are the exact same it basically comes down to which baby is

easier to reach. On the other hand some women do not want any say so in which baby to keep

and just let the doctor to decide. Later in the article she states how some people actually decide

which twin to kill by the gender. Some moms do not want anything to do with the decision on

which one to keep. Ruth asks "Is this because they feel guilty?" Dr. Richard Berkowitz ask, “iIn

a society where women can terminate a single pregnancy for any reason — financial, social,

emotional — if we have a way to reduce a twin pregnancy with very little risk, isn’t it legitimate

to offer that service to women with twins who want to reduce to a singleton?”

Formatted

Comment [GSC1]: I made the decision here to change a lot. Instead of just telling the readers that the author, Pawader, explains the process of the twin reduction in the article I actually explain it in my response. This article is talking about a very controversial issue in the world. I believe that actually explaining the process women go through is actually important for the readers to know.

17

Pregnancy with fertility is becoming more common in the United States, t. This is making

the twin reduction percentage increase as well. In a twin reduction women,, who knew the

posibilitiespossibilities of getting pregnant with twins, decide to kill one of the babies so their

left with just one. "Last year, by comparison, 61 of the center’s 101 reductions were to a

singleton, and 38 of those pregnancies started as twins. That shift has made some doctors in the

field uneasy,, and many who perform pregnancy reductions refuse to go below twins," states

author Ruth Pawader. If doctors are becoming uneasy about the reduction something must be

wrong with it. In one of the interviews a woman has a reduction, because one of the twins had

down sydromesyndrome and she did not want to be responsible for a kid with a problem like

that. She understands that is sounded selfish, but she seemed to think it would help the baby out

by not having to go throughtthrough the emotional and phyicalphysical problems later in life.

Another woman simply had a reduction, because she only wanted one baby and did not think she

could handle two. So is there a difference in the two situations or are both wrong?

Comment [GSC2]: I decided to put these two sentences together because they are very much related. I believe the sentences were okay and correct as separate sentences, but shows better writing skills if I combine them. Showing off good writing skills is always good, because we always want our readers to think that we are intelligent. So I believe I made a good decision by combining these sentences.

Comment [GSC3]: I made several spelling errors in the article response. I made these errors by just being careless and not proof reading. I’ve learned I need to proof read more carefully when i’m done with writings. I corrected my spelling errors throughout the response.

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Most Successful Article Response

I only asked for one baby not two!

Padawer, Ruth. "The Two-Minus-One Pregnancy." The New York Times. The New York Times

Company, August 2011. Web. 9 Sept. 2011.

In this article the author, Ruth Padawer, talks about women who get pregnant through

fertility and reduce twins down to only one baby. When working with fertility drugs, women will

more than likely become pregnant with multiple babies. Padawer interviews many women in this

article who decided on the two-to-one procedure. She finds out what made the women decide to

get rid of the other baby and how they went about it. She believes that twin reduction is wrong.

Is twin reduction worse than abortion? This is the point she is trying to make in the article. "Even

some people who support abortion rights admit to feeling queasy about reduction to a singleton,"

author Ruth Pawader states. She also reveals the process that goes about with choosing which

twin to kill and which to keep. First it comes down to healthy or not. If one baby has health

problems usually that will be they baby that they kill. If both babies are healthy and the genders

are different, the women can choose according to which gender they want. If both babies are the

exact same it basically comes down to which baby is easier to reach. On the other hand some

women do not want any say so in which baby to keep and just let the doctor to decide. Ruth asks

"Is this because they feel guilty?" Dr. Richard Berkowitz ask, “in a society where women can

terminate a single pregnancy for any reason — financial, social, emotional — if we have a way

to reduce a twin pregnancy with very little risk, isn’t it legitimate to offer that service to women

with twins who want to reduce to a singleton?”

Pregnancy with fertility is becoming more common in the United States, this is making

the twin reduction percentage increase as well. In a twin reduction women, who knew the

Formatted

19

possibilities of getting pregnant with twins, decide to kill one of the babies so their left with just

one. "Last year, by comparison, 61 of the center’s 101 reductions were to a singleton, and 38 of

those pregnancies started as twins. That shift has made some doctors in the field uneasy, and

many who perform pregnancy reductions refuse to go below twins," states author Ruth Pawader.

If doctors are becoming uneasy about the reduction something must be wrong with it. In one of

the interviews a woman has a reduction, because one of the twins had down syndrome and she

did not want to be responsible for a kid with a problem like that. She understands that is sounded

selfish, but she seemed to think it would help the baby out by not having to go through the

emotional and physical problems later in life. Another woman simply had a reduction, because

she only wanted one baby and did not think she could handle two. So is there a difference in the

two situations or are both wrong?

 

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Ashley Mills

Professor Horton

English 1101

3 November 2011

Lance: A Special One

In the article “Autism’s First Child,” John Donvan and Caren Zucker, stated that autism

is a highly individualized condition. This statement really stood out to me because after working

with special needs kids I have seen it fist hand. Two kids may have the same syndrome, but they

do not act the exact same as the other. I have seen myself that no two kids are alike. Not only is it

true in autism, but in every mental condition. Donald, the guy talked about in the article, was the

first child diagnosed with autism. He is very popular in his town. He loves to play golf and will

be on the golf course everyday sunshine or rain. With autism usually the person is very smart at

one thing, but not so much with everything elseA person with autism has a certain subject that

they are extremely smart in, but everything else is more difficult to understand.. Donald was

good with numbers and music. In this article the question, “what will happen when I die?” is

asked by parents of children with autism. The question is not fully answered within the context

of this article. Most autistic adults will live with relatives when their parents die, but when they

run out of relatives who knows what happens. There are some houses that adults with disabilities

can live in, but there are more than 80,000 on the waiting list. If autistic children were treated

normally and taught how to take care of themselves, they would not end up living in a home

depending on others to take care of them as adults. One main concern in the world today is

treating people with disabilities no different than people without disabilities. Sometimes this can

be hard, but it is the best thing you can do for someone like that.

Formatted

Comment [GSC1]: I took out a short little sentence and added it to the sentence before it. Then I added a little bit more detail. I felt like these sentences work better with my paper, because it explains what I was trying to say better. Before I fixed it the readers could have thought I meant no two normal kids are alike, but I am referring to kids with special needs. Adding that little detail into the sentences helped the paragraph a lot. 

Comment [GSC2]: I changed this sentence around because I felt that it was very confusing at first. We always want our readers to be able to just read the paper and go along smoothly, but this will not happen if you have a confusing sentences that makes them stop and have to think about what you are trying to say. At first my readers could have thought that I meant the person could just be smart at a particular thing such as, jumping rope, but in actuality I mean a certain subject such as, math. I believe this change really helped my paper.  

 

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In my case, I met a young adult named Lance Booth. Lance has a condition called prader-

willi syndrome. I met him while I was helping a teacher with the special education class in P.E.

At our school it is called Adaptive P.E.I met him while I was a student helper in Adaptive P.E.

Adaptive P.E. is when the special education kids are in the regular P.E. class, but get some extra

help from the student helpers. They can either do what the rest of the P.E. class is doing or they

can go to the side with the helpers and do their own thing. . The kids get a little extra help from

students who are put in the class to help out. I was not originally supposed to be in the class, but

things did not work out with another class. I am so happy now that it worked out the way it did.

While I was in the class, two other students, Carmen Flores and Kasey Black, helped out as well.

They can either do what the rest of the P.E. class is doing or they can go to the side with the

helpers and do their own thing. When I began helping with this class one certain guy stuck out to

me and that was Lance. Lance became very attached to me. He would want to do everything I

did and go everywhere I went. I also fell in love with Lance. The things he would do and say just

made me smile and laugh every day. Of course, I also had to help the other kids out too and pay

them attention as well, but usually a kid will get attached to one student and only listen to them.

Seeing how I helped Lance overcome obstacles made me realize I wanted to teach special

education.Watching Lance learn all the new things I taught him made me decide to be a Special

Education teacher.

I still remember the first day I really got to know Lance. I had been in the class for a

couple of days and he would just stare at me and ask the teacher who I was. Mrs. Adams would

always reply, “hHer name is Ashley why don’t you go talk to her?” The third day I was in the

class I was on a workout bike “racing” another special education student named Drew. Lance

walked over and spilled out all these “words” and I had no idea what he said. Mrs. Adams had to

Comment [GSC3]: In this change I combined the two sentences to one sentence. By doing this I made the sentence very short, but I felt like the two separate sentences were just not needed. While I was originally writing this paper I could have done that just to make the paragraph longer, but I understand that it shows examples of bad writing skills and we always want to write as good as possible.  

Comment [GSC4]: With this change I totally took out part of the paragraph. After I kept reading the couple of sentences they did not really flow good. So, I tried many different ways to rewrite them so that they did flow good, but I could not get them to. After trying over and over again I realized that the information is not really needed in my paper, so I just took the sentences out. I do not think this hurt my paper at all.  

Comment [GSC5]: I decided to change my thesis sentence for my paper. After reading my paper and getting comments from other people my original thesis did not fit my paper well. When I state the word obstacles I kind of take everything else I talk about in the paper out of importance. So with changing my thesis I believe I have bettered my paper.  

 

22  

translate for me and told me he wanted to know why I was in the class. came over and translated

for me. He was asking me why I was in the class with them. We had a good conversation about

me and how I would be helping his class for a while. From that day forward I was Lance’s best

friend. I began to ask the teacher more about Lance to figure him out. The syndrome he has

causes him to be overweight. His mind does not let him knowtell him when he is full. So if

nobody stops him he would eat all day or eat things he shouldn’t such as the core of an apple..

He also could not see perceptive in height. When he would look at steps it would look flat, but

with lines. So, he walked very slow everywhere he went. He could not talk very good, .

eEspeciallyspecially when he got real excited, everything was just gibberish. He learned to use

hand motions to help people figure outtell what he was talking about. I can have a full

conversation with Lance now and understand most of everything he is saying because I have

been around him a lot. By the end of the class I knew I wanted to teach special education.

Being in the Aadaptive P.E. class was a big turning point in my life and ended up

showing me that I would grow up to be a special education teacher. I knew I had always wanted

to teach, but this class showed me I wanted to teach special education. I loved being around

those kids. Every day I would just look forward to 3rd block so that I could be with them. Any

free time I had during classes I would always go down to their classroom to help their teacher

and actually see the classroom view of a special education teacher. I believe the actual moment

that made me decide to teach special education was when I helped Mrs. Adams with a test for

Lance. We had to test him on what he was learning throughout the year in the class. So, I took

pictures of the basketball goal, the treadmill, and the bicycle. Then, I showed them to Lance to

see if he could recognize each picture and tell me what he wanted to do by pointing to them. He

learned what a basketball goal was and that he loved to shoot basketball. He knew that he did not

Comment [GSC6]: I felt like changing this sentences and combing them into one sentence made more sense for my paper. Many times in my paper I make this change. I feel like a lot of times I feel like I was just trying to make my paper longer. This is not a good thing to do, because then my readers may feel like I am trying to split my information up to much. Instead I need to combine these sentences.  

Comment [GSC7]: Adding this little bit of information to my topic sentence helped out a lot. At first, my topic sentence did not really relate to the information in my paragraph. Now that I have added that bit of sentence people can understand that this paragraph is explaining what made me decided to be a special education teacher.  

 

23  

like walking on the treadmill (which we still made him do) and he knew that he would be okay

with “racing” on the bike if the basketball goal was occupied. Seeing him able to identify all

these things meant so much to me, because I knew I was part of the reason he learned it. Lance

ended up learning a lot more than expected by being in adaptive P.E. Helping him learn different

things throughout the year gave me the confidence I needed to be a special education teacher.

When I first entered the adaptive P.E. class I was afraid to really do anything, but by the

end of the class I had a lot of confidence. The other students that helped had been around the kids

more than I have so I kind of just let them do everything. I finally started getting used to the way

the kids did things and what they needed help with. I opened up a lot when Lance got attached to

me, because the only one he wanted help from was me. I loved teaching Lance new things. He

loved to shoot basketball so while he would play I would make him count every basketyone he

made. When he would get to ten we would run around the gym. By the end of the semester he

could count to ten all by his self. Sometimes all the basketball goals would be taken, so we

would have to find something else to do. I would take him down to the exercise room and he

would always complain. So I began telling him that he was Dale Earnhardt Jr. and I was Tony

Stewart and we would race on the bikes. He would always shout out 88 and then start peddling

really fast. Of course, he would always beat me, but I was happy to get him to exercise. By the

end of the year he lost 20 pounds that he really needed to lose. This gave me the confidence and

showed me that I would be a great teacher to special education kids. It takes a special gift to

teach special need kidsthem and I believe I have it.

Teaching special education is something that I have wanted to do since my sophomore

year in high school. When I tell people that they usually look at me and say God bless you,

because many people cannot do it. Working with Lance showed me that patience is a big key to

Comment [GSC8]: By adding this sentence into the paragraph I feel that it shows how much passion I had for Lance and helping him learn things. Without this sentences it like I am just explaining what he learned as if I do not care, but this paper is about how much helping him meant to me and shaped my career. So, after adding this sentence I feel like the readers see just how much all this meant to me.  

Comment [GSC9]: I added on to this sentences because I felt like my topic sentences did not really fit well with my paragraph. In this paragraph I am explaining how teaching Lance to do these things gave me the confidence I needed to teach special education. With my original topic sentence I said nothing about gaining confidence so that was a bad topic sentence.  

 

24  

working with special need kids and this is why many people cannot do it. Not that the people are

trying to be mean, but it takes a lot of patience to be around those kids. I learned that a lot with

Lance. When I would ask him to get on the treadmill and walk, we would have to have a long

discussion about why he needed to walk. When I would tell him to get his lunch and go to the

table, he would have to stop and talk to everyone on the way. I usually do not have a lot of

patience, but with these kids, I do. Of course, I am debating on rather to be a teacher or not. I

have a love for kids in special education, but the teaching field is doing awful right now. So

many people are losing their jobs and many teachers tell me teaching is not even enjoyable

anymore. Teaching is so much more than just doing what you love, behind the scenes is a lot of

useless junk you are doing. Teachers themselves have told me not to go into teaching because

there is so much extra stuff you have to do; it’s almost not even enjoyable anymore. Hearing

teachers themselves say this makes the decision harder for me. My plan was to get my bachelors

in early childhood and then get my masters in special education. At this time I still have no idea

what I am going to do in my future, but I will find a place for my kids.

Comment [GSC10]: Making a change to this sentence I believe showed I have matured in my writing. In the original sentence I felt like it was just a sentence that a beginning writer would write. After being in the class and learning better ways to write I feel like I can write better sentences. The new sentence basically says the same exact thing just states the information in a more intelligent way.  

Comment [GSC11]: I decided it was best to change this sentence because at first it sounds as if I just assume that I know this information. I did not tell the readers that the teachers told me the information. Now I could leave it and it would probably not cross the readers mind, but I feel better with it changed.  

25  

Ashley Mills

Professor Horton

English 1101

3 November 2011

Lance: A Special One

In the article “Autism’s First Child,” John Donvan and Caren Zucker, stated that autism

is a highly individualized condition. This statement really stood out to me because after working

with special needs kids I have seen it fist hand. Two kids may have the same syndrome, but they

do not act the exact same as the other. Not only is it true in autism, but in every mental condition.

Donald, the guy talked about in the article, was the first child diagnosed with autism. He is very

popular in his town. He loves to play golf and will be on the golf course everyday sunshine or

rain. A person with autism has a certain subject that they are extremely smart in, but everything

else is more difficult to understand. Donald was good with numbers and music. In this article the

question, “what will happen when I die?” is asked by parents of children with autism. The

question is not fully answered within the context of this article. Most autistic adults will live with

relatives when their parents die, but when they run out of relatives who knows what happens.

There are some houses that adults with disabilities can live in, but there are more than 80,000 on

the waiting list. If autistic children were treated normally and taught how to take care of

themselves, they would not end up living in a home depending on others to take care of them as

adults. One main concern in the world today is treating people with disabilities no different than

people without disabilities. Sometimes this can be hard, but it is the best thing you can do for

someone like that.

26  

In my case, I met a young adult named Lance Booth. Lance has a condition called prader-

willi syndrome. I met him while I was a student helper in Adaptive P.E. Adaptive P.E. is when

the special education kids are in the regular P.E. class, but get some extra help from the student

helpers. They can either do what the rest of the P.E. class is doing or they can go to the side with

the helpers and do their own thing. While I was in the class, two other students, Carmen Flores

and Kasey Black, helped out as well. When I began helping with this class one certain guy stuck

out to me and that was Lance. Lance became very attached to me. He would want to do

everything I did and go everywhere I went. I also fell in love with Lance. The things he would do

and say just made me smile and laugh every day. Of course, I also had to help the other kids out

too and pay them attention as well, but usually a kid will get attached to one student and only

listen to them. Watching Lance learn all the new things I taught him made me decide to be a

Special Education teacher.

I still remember the first day I really got to know Lance. I had been in the class for a

couple of days and he would just stare at me and ask the teacher who I was. Mrs. Adams would

always reply, “her name is Ashley why don’t you go talk to her?” The third day I was in the class

I was on a workout bike “racing” another student named Drew. Lance walked over and spilled

out all these “words” and I had no idea what he said. Mrs. Adams had to translate for me and told

me he wanted to know why I was in the class. We had a good conversation about me and how I

would be helping his class for a while. From that day forward I was Lance’s best friend. I began

to ask the teacher more about Lance to figure him out. The syndrome he has causes him to be

overweight. His mind does not let him know when he is full. So if nobody stops him he would

eat all day or eat things he shouldn’t such as the core of an apple. He also could not see

perceptive in height. When he would look at steps it would look flat with lines. So, he walked

27  

very slow everywhere he went. He could not talk very good, especially when he got real excited,

everything was just gibberish. He learned to use hand motions to help people figure out what he

was talking about. I can have a full conversation with Lance now and understand most of

everything he is saying because I have been around him a lot. By the end of the class I knew I

wanted to teach special education.

Being in the Adaptive P.E. class was a big turning point in my life and ended up showing

me that I would grow up to be a special education teacher. I knew I had always wanted to teach,

but this class showed me I wanted to teach special education. I loved being around those kids.

Every day I would just look forward to 3rd block so that I could be with them. Any free time I

had during classes I would always go down to their classroom to help their teacher and actually

see the classroom view of a special education teacher. I believe the actual moment that made me

decide to teach special education was when I helped Mrs. Adams with a test for Lance. We

had to test him on what he was learning throughout the year in the class. So, I took pictures of

the basketball goal, the treadmill, and the bicycle. Then, I showed them to Lance to see if he

could recognize each picture and tell me what he wanted to do by pointing to them. He learned

what a basketball goal was and that he loved to shoot basketball. He knew that he did not like

walking on the treadmill (which we still made him do) and he knew that he would be okay with

“racing” on the bike if the basketball goal was occupied. Seeing him able to identify all these

things meant so much to me, because I knew I was part of the reason he learned it. Lance ended

up learning a lot more than expected by being in adaptive P.E. Helping him learn different things

throughout the year gave me the confidence I needed to be a special education teacher.

When I first entered the adaptive P.E. class I was afraid to really do anything, but by the

end of the class I had a lot of confidence. The other students that helped had been around the kids

28  

more than I have so I kind of just let them do everything. I finally started getting used to the way

the kids did things and what they needed help with. I opened up a lot when Lance got attached to

me, because the only one he wanted help from was me. I loved teaching Lance new things. He

loved to shoot basketball so while he would play I would make him count every basket he made.

When he would get to ten we would run around the gym. By the end of the semester he could

count to ten all by his self. Sometimes all the basketball goals would be taken, so we would have

to find something else to do. I would take him down to the exercise room and he would always

complain. So I began telling him that he was Dale Earnhardt Jr. and I was Tony Stewart and we

would race on the bikes. He would always shout out 88 and then start peddling really fast. Of

course, he would always beat me, but I was happy to get him to exercise. By the end of the year

he lost 20 pounds that he really needed to lose. This gave me the confidence and showed me that

I would be a great teacher to special education kids. It takes a special gift to teach special need

kids and I believe I have it.

Teaching special education is something that I have wanted to do since my sophomore

year in high school. When I tell people that they usually look at me and say God bless you,

because many people cannot do it. Working with Lance showed me that patience is a big key to

working with special need kids and this is why many people cannot do it. When I would ask him

to get on the treadmill and walk, we would have to have a long discussion about why he needed

to. When I would tell him to get his lunch and go to the table, he would have to stop and talk to

everyone on the way. I usually do not have a lot of patience, but with these kids, I do. Of course,

I am debating on rather to be a teacher or not. I have a love for kids in special education, but the

teaching field is doing awful right now. So many people are losing their jobs and many teachers

tell me teaching is not even enjoyable anymore. Teachers themselves have told me not to go into

29  

teaching because there is so much extra stuff you have to do; it’s almost not even enjoyable

anymore. Hearing teachers themselves say this makes the decision harder for me. My plan was

to get my bachelors in early childhood and then get my masters in special education. At this time

I still have no idea what I am going to do in my future, but I will find a place for my kids.