Reflection in Action

You've seen examples of all of the parts of a reflective essay, but you saw each part isolated from the rest of the essay. Can you identify the parts of a reflective essay in context, as you're reading an entire essay? Give it a try. Read the essay below and answer the questions beside it.

first-person point of view
second-person point of view
third-person limited point of view
third-person omniscient point of view

Reflective essays are autobiographical and should be told from the writer's point of view.

the importance of the writer's Puerto Rican culture
something that happened because of the writer's weak English
the quality of the narrator's relationship with her mother and father
how the hardships of poor eyesight affected the narrator

The writer establishes from the very beginning that language barriers affect her home and school life.

the exciting climax
a flashback
description of people's appearance
dialogue

Including conversations in the body of a reflective essay makes the story come to life

cause and effect
chronological
general to specific
specific to general

Reflective essays are easy for readers to follow when written in time order.

Then, just as Papi had predicted, she asked why I had been absent.
Our teacher, whose name I never learned, was an older woman with teased blonde hair who kept her glasses on a chain around her neck.
...my cheeks burned with the shame of being a girl with little English, a girl who could barely see, who had a freak for a brother and a chicken growing in her stomach.
I folded my hands on the wooden desk as the teacher began to take attendance.

This statement shows why this event had such an impact on the writer.

Questions answered correctly:

Questions answered incorrectly:

P.S. 150, Bronx, New York

by Iris Ortiz

November 1967

Unlike other American children, I started school when I was six years old. I knew no English, which is ironic since I was born in New York. My parents were Puerto Rican immigrants and spoke only Spanish at home, so I had little opportunity to practice the language I needed to speak at school. Mami listened to the Spanish radio station, WADO, and watched the Spanish TV network, Telemundo. Papi knew just enough English to get by as an apprentice at a printing plant during the day and an office cleaner at night, but since I was usually asleep by the time he came home, we did not practice our English together. Added to this, my eyesight was poor, though my parents didn’t know. My teacher sent notices home suggesting I have my eyes examined, but Mami always threw away letters from school, along with the loose papers and envelopes inserted in my notebook. Caring only for neatness, she even threw away my artwork. She never checked for homework, either—the homework I never did. How could she? She couldn’t read, write, or speak English.

Because of the language barrier and my nearsightedness, I welcomed any excuse to miss school. I feigned sleepiness or complained about the weather. Mami often let me stay home, especially when it rained, because walking me to school was more of a nuisance than keeping me home with Andy, my one-year-old brother, who was often sick. Andy had stomach pains accompanied by awful bouts of diarrhea. Curled up in his crib, he’d moan or rock back and forth at a frantic speed, laughing incoherently. I thought he was a freak. It shamed me to think this of him, but worse than having a freak for a brother was the fear of being a freak myself. Mami was my security. I did not want to go to school. I wanted to stay home, and in this she was a willing partner. My education mattered no more to her than her own schooling had mattered to her parents in Puerto Rico: when she finished sixth grade, they kept her home to do the household chores.

Now I had been absent from school for several consecutive days, and Papi was walking with me, holding tightly to my hand as we navigated the two blocks from our apartment building on Tiffany Street to my school building on E. 167th Street. The November wind blew my ponytail so that it slapped my face. Papi, whose role it was to take care of anything related to the English-speaking world, instructed me on how to explain myself to the teacher.

“The teacher will ask why you have been absent. You must tell her: ‘I had estomek egg.’ ”

I frowned and asked him to repeat it.

Papi let go of my hand, grasped his stomach, and said, “I had estomek egg.”

Thanks to Dr. Seuss, I recognized the word egg, but I could not understand why my father would advise me to say I had an egg in my stomach. Why would he tell me to lie? Or was it a lie? Did I indeed have an egg in my stomach? Was I growing a chicken? Why not? I was already a strange duck. I thought about how my long, thick hair twice had been infested with lice, little bugs with wings. And now, there was this chicken inside an egg inside my stomach. Let’s face it: like my brother Andy, I was a freak. The morning bell clanged as I walked slowly down the hall, afraid of cracking the egg in my stomach. I sat quietly at my assigned seat in the front row, close to the blackboard I could barely see. I folded my hands on the wooden desk as the teacher began to take attendance.

Our teacher, whose name I never learned, was an older woman with teased blonde hair who kept her glasses on a chain around her neck. When she called my name, I raised my hand to declare I was present. Then, just as Papi had predicted, she asked why I had been absent. I stared silently at her blank face as twice more she repeated the question, and my cheeks burned with the shame of being a girl with little English, a girl who could barely see, who had a freak for a brother and a chicken growing in her stomach. Somehow I managed to speak.

“An egg,” I said, softly. “I had egg in estomek.” —Iris Ortiz

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