Thesis Statement

Sebriana Ciarcia
November 19th, 2015
Professor Young
English 1100_35

Thesis Statement: Black ballerinas are the ideal ballerina, therefore choreographers should give them an equal opportunity.

Essay 3 Questions

Sebriana Ciarcia
November 9th, 2015
Professor Young
Essay 3 Questions

Factual Questions

1. What does your average ballet dancer look like?
2. What are the industries' standards?
3. What is the history of the ballet dancer and the correct look?
4. Who has overcome these standards?

Inductive Questions 

1. Why aren't minorities being hired?
2. How hard is it to be a minority in ballet?
3. Why is ballet stuck in traditional ideas?
4. What is being done to diverse the ballet industry? 

Analytical Question

1. Why is there discrimination and ballet and how can someone overcome it?

"Still Separate, Still Unequal: America's Educational Apartheid Quotes

Sebriana Ciarcia
October 26th, 2015
English 1100_35
Professor Young

1. "One of the most disheartening experiences for those who grew up in the years when Martin Luther King Jr. and Thurgood Marshall were alive is to visit public schools today that bear their names or names of other honored leaders of integration struggles that produced the temporary progress that took place in the three decades after Brown vs. Board of Education, and to find out how many of these schools are bastions of contemporary segregation."

2. "Perhaps the most damaging to any serious effect to address racial segregation openly is the refusal of most of the major arbiters of culture in our northern cities,"

3. "Visitors to schools like these discover quickly the eviscerated meaning of the word, (diverse) which is no longer a proper adjective but a euphemism for a plainer word that has apparently become unspeakable."

Response to Jean Anyon's "Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work"

Sebriana Ciarcia
September 23, 2015
English 1100_35
Professor Young

            In my educational experience I was fortunate enough to go to a magnet school, where students came in from all over the state to attend. There were students that came from middle, lower, and high-class areas of Connecticut. When I first read Jean Anyon’s Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work, I thought that there would be no way I could connect to this, but as I looked back on my freshmen year of high school, on the first day of math class I can very clearly make a connection. 

            On the first day there were a lot of students in the class from all different towns. The teacher was still trying to figure out where we all were in math. And the levels were all over the place. I began to notice that the students that came from middle class towns, like me, kind of had an understanding of how to the problem, while the students from lower income towns didn’t understand at all, and those from higher income families understood the problem inside and out and came up with different ways to solve the problem. This a prime example of what Anyon was talking about in her essay. There is a huge difference in the way schools prepare you based on your social class.

            I think her positions holds merit today in schools all across the country. There are countless of times where we see on the news that schools with students who come from lower income families tend to do worse on standardized tests than students from middle or higher income families. I’ve even seen in my school where even though students came from all different social class, the students who were from high class areas, who had better educational experiences, would be expected to excel more and were even favored more by the teachers and encouraged to grow more, while the other students were expected to just follow the steps on the board and hopefully get the answers and if not, “they just need more practice”, like stated in Anyon’s essay. After reading her essay though and reflecting my own experience I begin to wonder if they need more practice or more of an opportunity.

Students' Right to Their Language

Sebriana Ciarcia
September 17th, 2015
English 1100_35
Prof. Young

Students and Their Language

            Students should not only have the right to use their own language in an academic setting, but be encouraged to do so. Without the right to their own language what do students to have a right to? It’s important for students to have this right because it will allow students to learn how to express their own language with an academic background in mind. In including factual information and having organization in one's writing is a key necessity to great writing, but students also need to learn how to separate their writing with the rest and they can do this with their own unique language. Expressing your language as a writer is an extremely important skill to have. It separates your writing form everyone else’s. It gives us style and originality, but most importantly a voice.  But you need to be able to express your language in a way others will be able to understand your writing. That is why it is crucial that students have the right to use their language in an academic setting. They will be able to learn that important concept in an academic setting with teachers to help guide them. With the right to their language students will find the purpose and importance of their own language. This will help build stronger writers and bring diversity and originality to writing in the learning environment. The key to success in all writing is have your own style, originality, and identity, that's why it is important for students to have the right to their now language in an academic setting. 

What Identity Means to Me?

Sebriana Ciarcia

English 1100

9/3/15

Prof. Young

What Identity Means to Me?

 To me identity is whom a person truly is inside, but is also something that is tried to be changed, but this ideal of the perfect identity. Your identity is how people perceive you, but most importantly how you perceive yourself. I think that identity is not only important to me, but also to everyone else. It's something people have been fighting for, for years. Times are different today and society is more open to your true identity. People used to have conform themselves to fit into this ideal perfect identity society had. Before, society thought the perfect identity was someone who was a certain skin color and those who weren’t the right color still had their identity, but it wasn’t the right one.  There was a time when people who felt different couldn't come out and say they felt more like one gender than the other. But, today we are fortunate enough to have the opportunity to see people to show their true identity and live free. I believe we have been fighting for free identity for centuries and still fighting today. To me identity is who we truly are and I believe it’s something we still have to fight for today. Even with all the milestones we’ve made in the past there is still a lot ahead of us to make identity is who someone truly is, instead of what everyone else thinks identity. Maybe not to some people, but to me identity means the world to me. It’s something I never want to hide or stop fighting for because to me identity is me. I would never want me to change.

Quotes from "How to Tame a Wild Tongue"

Sebriana Ciarcia
English 1100
8/30/15
Prof. Young

Quotes From "How to Tame a Wild Tongue"

"Wild tongues can't be tamed, they can only be cut out."

"But for a language to remain alive it must be used." 

"I wil no longer be made to  feel ashamed of existing, I will have my voice: Indian, Spanish, white. I will have my serpent's tongue- my woman's voice, my sexual voice, my poet's voice. I will overcome the tradition of silence." 

Anzaldua, Gloria. "How to Tame a Wild Tongue". Teaching Developmental Writing. Ed. Susan Naomi Bernstein. Fourth ed. New York: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2013. 245-255. Print.

Reading Response Questions to "How to Tame a Wild Tongue"

Sebriana Ciarcia
English 1100
8/30/15
Prof. Young

Reading Response Questions to "How to Tame a Wild Tongue"

1. I think the open scene has a lot to do with the rest of the story. We start by learning about a time when Anzaldua went to the dentist and he had a hard time controlling her tongue, while working on her tongue. This set up the idea of not being label to control her speech, an idea that carried throughout the story. 

2. I liked how Anzaldua added Spanish into her writing. It made the story make even more sense and allowed the reader to have a better understanding what herself and her identity. I feel her purpose was to introduce the reader to her language, so we could get a better understand of everything she was trying to portray. 

3.  I think that Academic English can be defined as Spanish (Standard) because they both have the same purpose. Both are to be formal and the most correct form of their language. I think Chicano  Spanish could be described as nonstandard because it isn't formal and as commonly know as Spanish (Standard). Spanish (Standard) is known by those who learn Spanish and is known by any Spanish speaker around. I can infer that you can learn more about someone's identity from nonstandard than standard because nonstandard is more unique and you could learn more about the person who is speaking it. 

4. I think Academic English is necessary because it leaves a common ground for everyone to build off of and I also believe it gives everyone a common identity that can become into one that is more unique. 

5. The various types of English identities that stand out to me include, people who speak English in places like London because it's very different from the English over in America. What also comes to mind is how people have different lingo all over the country. There are different identities from Alaska to Alabama to Maine. Every where had different English identities. 

6. My friends and I most definitely have our own secret language and identity. We have our own terms for different things that people outside of our group may not understand. It makes unique and it's also a lot of fun to communicate in secret ways that only each other would understand. 

7. With my friends and family I will almost always use nonstandard English because I'm more comfortable with them and feel free to express myself in my own way, but with a professor I'd speak standard English because I think it's more appropriate and it's what is expected. 

8. I think the statement, "I am my language.", means that how you speak says a lot about you and is a major part of who you are as a person. I think it connects to our identity because you can tell a lot about someone by their language, such has their nationality and their culture. 

9. The introduction and conclusion connect because they both contain the idea that one cannot control their tongue and it is a part of who they are and it's something that can't be controlled or ever changed. 

10. Your language and be a big part of your identity because it's part of who you are and says a lot about you. It lets people know where you are from and your culture, which makes up a lot of one person. 

11. Identity is very important to me because it's what makes up me. It's what sets me apart from everyone else, which I think is important because everyone should be different and diverse. I think Anzaldua believe it's important because she states in her story she explains how people told her that her identity was wrong or she always had to try to hide, but by the end she embraced it all.




Anzaldua, Gloria. "How to Tame a Wild Tongue". Teaching Developmental Writing. Ed. Susan Naomi Bernstein. Fourth ed. New York: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2013. 245-255. Print.

Getting To Me

Sebriana Ciarcia
English 1100
8/26/15
Prof. Young

Getting To Know Me 

1. I  don't play any sports. I'm not very well coordinated. 
2. I am most passionate about singing and dancing. It's what I enjoy the most. 
3. My nickname is Sebi. My best friend gave it to me in the sixth grade and ever since then it stuck. 
4. Whenever I write I usually don't make a plan. I most likely will sit and let the words come to me. 
5. My writing experience was a lot of fun in high school. I was lucky enough to go to a preforming arts high school and I took classes in creative writing. In those classes I was able to experience and learn different types of writing. My teachers would let us revise are essays many times. They taught us about proper grammar and structure and we learned about the five paragraph essay, but it wasn't always enforced. 
6. My favorite genre of music is R&B and my favorite singer is Mariah Carey. 
7. I use social media pretty often. I would say I use it ten times a day. 
8. The most important thing I learn this semester is how to write to express myself and not always in five paragraph structures. 
9. If I was to rate myself as a writer I would give myself a B. I would give myself a B because I feel I am a good writer, but there is definitely some room for improvement.