Allissa Wery's Blog

I think English 12 was my favorite English class that I’ve taken in high school. The choices of novel we had to read was by far the best. The Great Gatsby was my favorite book that I’ve ever done as a novel or project. The projects we have done in this class were beneficial to me, and i have learned some things that I will take with me, after graduation. This course is laid out very nice. The instructions for every paper or project are clearly defined the day we are introduced to it. In conclusion,  I wouldn’t change anything about English 12.   

The survival unit was a long unit with a novel and a series of Survivor Man episodes. With the episodes, we watched each one as a class and took note of three survival traits that were linked with that episode and evidence. Then we would write a short essay explaining each of them. We had done this for three of the Survivor Man episodes. For the novel part of this unit, we had or choice of three books. I had chose to read Unbroken, the story of a former Olympian, and Veteran of World War II that had been a prisoner of war in Japan, but survived. This book was an excellent story. It was easy to put yourself in the story, standing there watch it all happen. The detail of some events, that took place in the story, were well written. With this novel, of our choice, we had to do worksheets describing the couple of chapters we read, over the specific time we were given. Each person in the group had a specific worksheet with a specific job of discussing the chapters. I think this unit was su...

My STTP defender was named Librada Paz. She was originally from Mexico, but left with her sister to hope farm to farm in America trying to make a living. She is known for advocacy of farm workers. She knows the struggles of being limited to jobs in America, and the harsh conditions she had to go through to have a good life, in the end. This project taught me mostly that other people have to work a lot harder to have half the life that I’m living. I don’t realize how good I have it. I don’t have to fight for anything, my freedom, peace, nothing. My defender fights for the rights of newcomers, of America, and their right to a clean and safe workplace. I also did not realize the amount of people that work in such harsh conditions, and make way under the legal minimum wage. This was a successful project for Jacob Thering and I. This was took a special interest to Jacob also, because of his knowledge and experience working on farms. The research we did was beneficial in the end; to know t...

Setting goals and accomplishing them makes you feel like you’re actually making progress. In the beginning in the year my month goal was to complete my college applications and send them in. After some thinking I chose my top six colleges and I applied to all of them. A couple months later, I received an acceptance letter from each college. I was super happy that even my reach college, SUNY Geneseo, had accepted me because I had been worrying if I had chose the right colleges. My end of the year goal was to decide where I am attending college, this was probably the hardest decision I’ve had to make in my life. I finally chose the hardest, and toughest college on my list, Geneseo. My long term goal was to successfully complete my college semesters with a high achieving GPA. I think if I can successfully adjust to the college life during my summer program I will be set for my first semester and be able to apply for the school of education right away! I really plan on crushing this goal...

David Kaus was my selected veteran that I, along with Nicole Sojka and Cookie Alteri, had the chance to speak with. David Kaus was a United States Marine and was active for four years. After thirteen weeks of bootcamp, which he described as to be nothing but yelling and screaming, and signing a four year aviation agreement, he was sent out to combat. His first day he was placed in the front lines, and ended up being six inches away from being killed by a sniper. He said you have to have the mindset of “if it's going to happen, let it happen”. He was a very positive and relaxed person. What got him through the end of the war, and returning home is the faith and trust her put in God. “Believe in the bible, and believe in Jesus Christ”, as Mr. Kaus said. To keep his mind off the fact that he could die at any moment, Mr. Kaus and a couple other military men would do gymnastics and workout all of the time. There was not much else to do, besides beer joints. This was a successful project...

The middle school experience was probably the worst, and there is no doubt in that. Middle school, for me, was all about making new friends. I had been in classes with people I was not friends with before. To this day I still have the same friends, so everything turned out okay. In middle school I continued getting super high grades. It was still so easy for me. I really liked all my teachers I had. In seventh and eighth grade, we repeated with the same teachers and I liked them the best so I was happy about it. My favorite subject was most definitely English. Mrs. Tryka and Mr. Fazio were some of my favorite teachers, most likely because they taught English. In middle school my favorite memory would be our eighth grade field trip we did at the end of the year. All of the teachers made up games for us to play and we had a whole day of fun. I also had a lot of fun at the fun nights. They were nowhere near as fun as high school dances but for middle school students, they were fun. I st...

High school was such a fast time in my life. I felt like everything went by so fast. It doesn't seem possible that I graduate in two weeks, it's such a sad, happy, exciting, nerve racking, and stressful feeling. Some of my favorite part of school were the Friday football games, the dances, playing soccer my freshman and sophomore year, and Prom. I regret continuing to play sports in high school. I chose work over sports because I wanted a car and everything else I own now. I wish I would've just found a way to work and play sports at the same time. I wish that freshman year I would've listened to Carll and stuck with track, and sophomore year, I would've just kept playing soccer. Now being a senior and looking back, I definitely think freshman year was my favorite year. Freshman year I made so many friends in the older classes, mostly with the seniors. As a freshman, you had so many memories to make ahead of you, and you had no idea. My favorite teachers, I'll m...

These grades flew by in the blink of an eye, but they will always be some of the greatest years. I think I enjoyed school a lot more than others did at that age. I thought my teachers were like superheros. As a kid I always dreamed of becoming a teacher, so I looked up to all of them. In kindergarten I had Mrs. Abrams as my teacher, Mrs. Stoltman in first, Mrs. Mooney and Mrs. Whiteford in second, Mrs. Fazio in third, Ms. Imes (now Mrs. Silvestri) in fourth, and Mrs. Mooney again in fifth grade. In kindergarten I was the first kid to go to school out of my whole family; the first day of school I had about fifteen people just standing at the end of my driveway, waving me off to school on my very first day. The year followed that my sister had her turn to experience the first day of kindergarten, I believe my grandparents showed up. I was clearly the favorite. Growing up I always liked hanging with the adults, overhearing their conversations. I was always told I was too smart for my ag...