National Adult Literacy Database

August 27, 2012

This week, we have a story written by Stephanie Chestnut, from Winnipeg, Manitoba. Stephanie is enrolled in literacy classes at one of the Adult Education Centres in Winnipeg.

This is My School Experience

by Stephanie Chestnut

The difference between school and life is, in school you’re taught a lesson and then given a test. In life, you’re given a test that teaches you a lesson. The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do, or my saying is: no pain, no fear, no surrender.

The reason I’m writing this is to talk about my past and present experience of school and how it changed my life. Some of it may be good, and some of it may be bad, depending on how you look at it, but this is my story. I don’t want to be judged or anything; I just want to be heard. First I’ll talk about my past experience, then I’ll talk about what is happening now.

My past school experiences weren’t good ones. Back then I used to get teased a lot because I matured a lot faster than anyone else, but I fought back. When I was in Grade Eight at Victor Mager there was this teacher that treated me so badly. He always let the other students in the classroom get away with everything, and I was always wrong, so in the middle of Grade Eight I quit school because I had enough of their crap. They gave me a lot of hassle about it and tried to get me back in school but I didn’t go back.

When we moved away from that school and lived by another school, apparently we lived by. Now St. George School was bugging me about why I wasn’t at school. I told them I don’t go to school anymore, and that I don’t know why it says I’m supposed to be there. Then the school board got involved and wanted me and my mom to come in and have a meeting with them, so we finally made a deal with them, that I would have one-on-one support with teachers two days a week to get my Grade Nine. I wasn’t too happy about it, but I did it. When I was to go to a different school for Grade Ten the next year, but they told me that I was too young to go to Glenlawn at this time. They wanted me to do Grade Nine again in the classroom with the other students. I said, ‘No, I’m not doing that’, so I stayed home.

To read more of Stephanie’s story, please click on this link, which goes to Write On!, Fall 2011, the Literacy Partners of Manitoba (LPM) magazine – see pages 8-9: http://www.mb.literacy.ca/write-on/2011fall.pdf.