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Jake Keating Ms. Caruso ENGL 1101 5 October 2011 South Mecklenburg High School Some people may argue that the only intention of high school is to further the students
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educational background and to make them a genius with textbooks. I, for one, have a different perspective and have extracted an abundance of opportunities out of my high school. South

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Mecklenburg High School has provided me with academic progression and success, teamwork though sports, and adapting to diversity among peers. Also among these purposes, I will compare and contrast another high school named Ardrey Kell to South Mecklenburg. In this paper, I plan

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to scrutinize all of these topics and explain how South Mecklenburg accomplishes these to the fullest degree. When it comes to a high school, its overall purpose of existence is to educate the students that attend it. On the topic of education, South Mecklenburg is not a school that wins the award for the states best test scores, but it did do its job satisfactorily. The school did not see learning as other schools did, and they did not hammer knowledge into students which could cause them to hate school. The process is stress free and easy going, which makes most students not feel so uptight about learning. For example, the method of group projects that were done in

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class made gathering information and learning interesting and showed a hands-on approach to students. Though this school did not receive the Academic School of the Year or any award

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of that nature, I truly believe that this school and some of the methods used got information
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across in a much more logical manner. If South Mecklenburg had not been as laid back in their approach toward learning, many people, including myself, would have had struggled obtaining a good education from this school. South Mecklenburg emphasizes more than just textbook knowledge that many other schools believe is important. Textbooks are not the ideal way to learn about a situation such as an

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interview, involving and understanding people are some things that would be beneficial. South Mecklenburg fulfills its academic purposes to a great extent and gave a variety of great skills that can be sustained throughout life. At South Meck, I prepared business projects to be presented to my class with visual and

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written technical information. This type of learning was a great scenario for on the job training in business situations of many types that many companies might expect of an employee. Most every high school has sports teams that contend in competition, but only certain high schools have teams that perform well and have an extremely supportive student body. South Mecklenburg is a school that has outstanding teams that are notorious in many sports and, in addition, have a spirited group of students who always come out for the game. When I go to a

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game the student fans are congregated in one area of the stands. They often bring signs and cheer wildly for our team that is on the field. It invigorates the South Meck team and I can see that they do better with the support they lend. When I am on the field playing soccer it makes me feel better when there is support. This is a very gratifying feeling to know that the fans who are students, parents and faculty care about us. Fans for the team travel boundless distances to away

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games and never miss home games. In this school the fans and students also feel like they are enrolled in the teams and bring the institution together. These sports teams at South Mecklenburg set a great example of how to supportive
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people in life help to bring success to those they care about. Also it shows the characteristics of a team, how everyone is befriended and they stand up for each other. This is a feeling of a family within the school that is provoked by the sports teams. South Mecklenburgs aspiration of teamwork within sports is definitely carried out throughout the school. Another function that the school carries out is the ability to adapt to diversity and variety among peers. South Mecklenburg is a high school that deals with all categories of different religions, races, and languages. It represents people from all over the world and respectively, their views of different topics come with that. Certain schools have predominately black or white populations which is not an accurate representation of how the world, or even our country, is. South Mecklenburg is a school that is a melting pot where all cultures are accepted and made to feel a part of the overall group. People intermix within each other and do not hold prejudices against each other because of a certain characteristics. This institution represents how

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our country is today and how so many cultures are made to feel welcome. Some people may have come from previous schools that were predominately one race and South Mecklenburg helped to imbue how to become accustomed to this factor of our lives. Several friends of mine

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that went to private schools in earlier years, transferred to South Mecklenburg to become part of a larger and more cultural experience in social and academic learning. My soccer team at the school provided me with close relationships with Asian, Black, Hispanic and Foreign students as

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well as others. When I attended the Ardrey Kell matches I did not see the support in a diverse situation. Down the road a few miles from South Mecklenburg is Ardrey Kell High School, the studious, predominately white school that does everything perfectly as if they had memorized the rulebook. The sports teams had support but couldnt, recognize the real definition of teamwork within the high school. The school is radically different from South Mecklenburg in too many ways to count. Ardrey Kell is a school thats constantly recognized for their academic achievements, high standardized test scores, and other things of that nature. They went by the textbook to teach everything in almost a robotic manner that imprints certain knowledge into ones brain. It was virtually the exact opposite of the South Mecklenburg way of learning. Though Ardrey Kells students were extraordinarily book smart, when interacting with them they seemed to struggle with personal situations and real world settings. Compared to South Mecklenburg, Ardrey Kell served the educational purpose in limited ways. The education is not fully dependent on how well a student can answer a question. One also has to take into account real situations that occur and the ability of the person to cope with them. I feel that Ardrey Kell may have emphasized
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memorization as a main method of learning while South Mecklenburg took on an approach that involved more visual and group project learning. The sports teams that resided at Ardrey Kell also had moderate influence on the factor of teamwork within sports. Though the teams at the high school are undoubtedly competitive and a challenge to beat, they did not come together as a team and seem to not have nearly as much team spirit as South Mecklenburg. The teams there did not come together and provide support

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for people in times of need. An example is not going to a match of a certain sport just because it is uninteresting. People that understand teamwork from the school will attend these because it is important to other people. Ardrey Kell simply did not come together as a team through sports which is one of the important points that South Mecklenburg did extremely well. The last intention that Ardrey Kell lacked to provide for the students was the experience of many different races incorporated into the school. Ardrey Kell showed mainly the Caucasian side of culture and left out many other races. These students sometimes feel distanced from other cultures and do not understand how to relate to certain peoples ways of living. In the world today, especially in America, there are an abundance of different cultures that exist and fill our community. Since there are an vast amount of cultures, people need to have the ability to adapt to
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situations and other peoples situations. My views are also similar in this case of the comparison in the sense that Ardrey Kell High School had a limited scope of the adaption of other cultures and it did not fulfill the desire of that topic. In my Rhetorical Analysis, South Mecklenburg High School was the text being examined to see if it accomplished its purposes. Those purposes consisted of academic progress, teamwork through sports, and the adaptation of diversity among peers. South Mecklenburg carried out these tasks well and served its intentions to the fullest, preparing the students well for the outside world. When compared to Ardrey Kell, the school was also a blatant success. Ardrey Kell lacked the entirety of these intentions and attended to only certain parts. In summing up my paper, I feel that South Mecklenburg is a great example of a school that

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provides students with successful academic progression, teamwork through sports and exposure to diverse populations.