{"id":1709,"date":"2019-11-25T09:47:11","date_gmt":"2019-11-25T14:47:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/greenstairsacademy.com\/dev\/?page_id=1709"},"modified":"2020-02-17T13:15:20","modified_gmt":"2020-02-17T18:15:20","slug":"2019-oct-by-hl-age-14-for-class-of-10-30-19","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/greenstairsacademy.com\/dev\/2018-class-notes-and-feedback\/2019-oct-by-hl-age-14-for-class-of-10-30-19\/","title":{"rendered":"2019 Oct by HL age 14 for class of 10\/30\/19"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Essay written by HL, 14 years old grade 9 male. Week of 10\/27\/19 written on 10\/30\/19<\/strong>. I was to memorize Imran Khan\u2019s speech in front of the U.N and test out for level one this week, I did neither. This week in the Green Stairs leadership Academy the teacher picked me up from my home around 9:00 A.M and as I opened his car door and stepped into his car making sure not to get the interior wet as it was raining profusely that day, I said salam (Islamic greeting translating to \u201cPeace be upon you\u201d) but I don\u2019t think that I said it loud enough as he did not hear it and explained to me that in every culture, it is a common custom to say a greeting when you meet someone or enter their presence. My takeaway from this experience is that it is always important to make sure that you are being polite and although this sounds oddly specific, make sure to always speak loud enough for those around me to hear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    As we were halfway to the\nmosque where we have our classes, the teacher asked me why he is always the one\nbringing fruit to class for everyone, and why someone else doesn\u2019t take the\nlead and bring fruit themselves. He wasn\u2019t saying this from a complaining\nperspective, rather, I took it as \u201cwhy doesn\u2019t someone else take the lead and\ndo something fairly easy, that is a common courtesy and doesn\u2019t take much\neffort.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    We got to the classroom at\naround 9:23 A.M and I sat down and started doing my meditation. At first I\nstarted with my fajr prayer, which is the first prayer of the day. After that I\nperformed sajdah (prostration) and tried to focus on my sajdah and put myself\nin the presence of God. At one point I assume about 10 or so minutes in I was\nable to put myself in that zone but only for a few short minutes as some of the\nother students began to walk in a became distracted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    I hadn\u2019t eaten breakfast\nthat morning so I had one of the bananas that the teacher had brought with him\nand I think that I will bring fruit this week as the teacher will be in Orlando\nthis coming weekend. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    After I ate we were to\npresent an excerpt from Imran Khan\u2019s speech in front of the U.N that we were\nsupposed to have memorized the previous week. I did not memorize it at home but\nmemorized it quickly before it was my turn to present. I did make a few\nmistakes however so I think for the speech that I am to memorize this week (the\nfinal sermon of the Prophet Muhammad (S)) I will just memorize it ahead of time\nso I don\u2019t slip up in class.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    After this I think the\nteacher was upset with me because I didn\u2019t test out for level one as I was\nsupposed to so he had me go get boxes of special Qur\u2019an sets from his car and\nbring them up to class. They were pretty heavy so I had to make about 3 trips.\nI passed out the Qur\u2019ans wrong at first so I had to redo it. I did not realize\nthat each box was one set, and that each copy of the Qur\u2019an had been split up\ninto 5 or so parts and was being bound together by a cardboard sleeve. After I\npassed out the Qur\u2019ans, I noticed that the teacher was clearly frustrated with\nour lack of dedication towards the class and asked us, \u201cWhy did I even come\ntoday if no one\u2019s going to do anything?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    We had a new student this\nclass who is 26 years old and attends NOVA community college. I forgot was his\nmajor was but it was something in business or IT. When I was introducing myself\nto him, he told me that he also runs a family-owned business here in Fairfax\nthat prints custom designs on T-shirts for local businesses, similar to\ncompanies like custom-ink, but on a smaller scale. I explained to him that I\nwant to study medicine in the future and he said that if I ever start my own\npractice, I should come to him to get the uniforms printed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    One of the other student\u2019s\nlittle brothers wasn\u2019t feeling well that day so he decided to stay in class\nwith his mom rather than going down to his class. Teacher gave him the page\nthat we are to memorize and told him that he would give him an entire tray of\nchocolates if he could memorize it before the end of 2019. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Near the end of class,\nanother students parents attended the class to listen to their daughter\u2019s\nspeech as she often gets very nervous and teacher thought it would be good if\nshe had to say the speech in front of her parents. After they got settled, the\nteacher pointed to me and said \u201cYou see *my name* over there? He could easily\ndo the work in the class if he wanted to, but he doesn\u2019t because he knows level\n2 comes with more work,\u201d it was an embarrassing moment and I hope to pass level\none within the next couple weeks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Essay written by HL, 14 years old grade 9 male. Week of 10\/27\/19 written on 10\/30\/19. I was to memorize Imran Khan\u2019s speech in front of the U.N and test out for level one this week, I did neither. This week in the Green Stairs leadership Academy the teacher picked me up from my […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":463,"parent":1777,"menu_order":151,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"h5ap_radio_sources":[],"_glsr_average":0,"_glsr_ranking":0,"_glsr_reviews":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1709","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/greenstairsacademy.com\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1709","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/greenstairsacademy.com\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/greenstairsacademy.com\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greenstairsacademy.com\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greenstairsacademy.com\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1709"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/greenstairsacademy.com\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1709\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1710,"href":"https:\/\/greenstairsacademy.com\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1709\/revisions\/1710"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greenstairsacademy.com\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1777"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greenstairsacademy.com\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/463"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/greenstairsacademy.com\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}