Throughout my classrooms by israel

Throughout my classrooms by israel - November 2025 Scholarship Essay

Throughout my time in school, technology has always helped create connections between many students at once, whether through Kahoot, Blooket, or Gimkit. During elementary school, I’m sure most students remember watching their teachers fidget with the Smart Board throughout the class when it needed calibration. I distinctly remember my teachers letting students go up and help calibrate it. It was often a happy little accident when that happened. Those moments definitely created a closer classroom environment and allowed us to become more familiar with each other.
During elementary school and one year of middle school, I stayed at school far longer than most other students—from 6:30 AM to 5:30 PM. I remained in these AM-PM programs because my parents couldn’t pick up my sister and me due to work. These programs always gave us extra time and practice in the classroom, providing work on Chromebooks that helped us build a more solid academic foundation. There was also scheduled time during these programs to play games, which included board games, card games, and Nintendo’s Wii U. One of the leaders of the morning program was Mr. I. He was the heart of the program in our school—always ready to help with schoolwork, but the best part was how he taught us a variety of fun card games using spare Chromebooks. This gave us plenty of fun games to play while we waited to be released at the start of the school day. During spare time in the after-school program, I would always try to get my friends to play card games with me and teach them what Mr. I had taught us.
When teachers switched to projectors in middle school, technology made teaching easier by offering a more versatile way to show us what they were doing. They no longer had to go up to the whiteboard and block the view until the last second, leaving us only a couple of seconds to understand and write down what we needed before they moved on. Having the flexibility to go through assignments online or through the projector provided variety instead of constantly looking up at the board. Another helpful tool as I moved through the grades was the Chromebook—or at the very least, the ability to Google anything and get an answer. Whenever a teacher asked us to verify or confirm information they were unsure of during a lecture, we used the quick and easy access of the Chromebook to help them continue the lesson without pausing everything while the teacher confirmed it themselves. Having all this technology around has always been a big part of my school life and it never seems to have many down sides.