Personal Narrative: The American School System

As my mother announced that our family was migrating to the United States, I entered a state of shock and excitement. I was filled with joy knowing that I was moving to foreign, that is a common slang we would say when anyone from Jamaica is moving to another foreign county. At the time I was about eleven years old, so I had no idea the major culture shock that was awaiting me. As I started to get acquainted with my new surroundings, one of the things I struggled with was school and even to this day, I still continue to struggle. I may come as being biased and ethnocentric, but personally I think that the Jamaican school system is much better than the American school system. I came from a school system that was very stern and strict. For example everyone before my class would start, the entire school would line up by grades and we would have a

Back home I was used to a material culture. One of the many customs that I was used back home is waking up in the morning to my own garden, I am able to pick my fruits out of my own backyard. Everything that I needed was right there in my reach. I had an orange tree, cherry tree, mango tree and other foods. While back home my mother had a chicken pen, we would raise our own chickens, plant our food. That was a big adjustment, I had to adjust to going to the supermarket for everything that you need. Many of the things I needed to survive were handmade, for example when I needed uniforms to go to school, my mother would buy the material and use a sowing machine to make my uniform. As years went by of living in America, I feel as if I have lost independence because I have of how I have much I have become so dependent on technology, like for example, when I’m doing math homework, I would be able to work out the math problems in my head but now when I’m doing my homework I am constantly using a graphing