Hi, my name is Sumaira Zahoor, I was born August 17^th, 1979 and I am currently 32 years of age. I represent Pakistan in the woman’s track and field events. My top best running time for the 1500m dash is 4:31 in 2004. In 2005 my best was 4:43 for the 1500m individual. Also in 2003 I ran the 50,000m race in my record time of 19:18 hours. On august 23 2008 I was banned for 2 years from competing because I failed to pass a dope test, along with 6 other teammates. I have truly learned my lesson and have not done any since then. When I am not busy competing or training I like to spend most of my time with my 2 children Sara and Andy, and with my sweet loving dog named Zoee. I started when I was in 5th grade going to the school of Merton. My uncle was a top track and field runner and was once the top male runner in all of Pakistan. He was the one who inspired me to take on the sport. When I was younger I would watch him practice on the track and would sometimes run with him. Ever since then I have been a die- hard track and field runner. My uncle dies when I was 11 so I only had those couple years to run and train with him. I have looked back many times thinking were I would be now if I didn’t have that experience and had fallen in love with the sport. My main goal in life before I die is to win the top ranking in track and field in the Olympics some day!

Why I Like The Academy!

When I first came into the Academy I new exactly what I was getting my self into. I new it was going to be difficult and way different learning style then I have ever done before. My first full semester of high school went by pretty smoothly. I would say that the biggest part was from Academy. The way that our teachers are teaching us, I think is very neat. I love how much space and freedom each and everyone of us have. I didn’t exactly expect it to be this laid back, were we can chose how we want to put together and complete our projects. So I’d have to say that, that little surprise was nice. There are also other parts of the teaching style of the teachers that i like, such as, every one of them explains each one of our projects so clearly. There is absolutely no confusion after they have showed u the criteria we have to meet when completing a project. Also i think its a great method, how in every project they accommodate lots of different project learning styles. Such as some would be like, if your a creative person the teachers would have a project were there is drawing, painting or constructing involved. Lots of our projects have to do with putting together a project with writing which if you were a person who liked to look up info and enjoyed writing, they were trying to accommodate your learning style. I think its so neat how they do this, iv never seen this done before.

A part of why I like the academy has to do with the teachers and the students. First of the teachers are just all great people and have such different unique personalities. I've never been in a learning environment before, with more then two teachers.I really like how we get so much one on one time with each of our teachers. I feel that they are so much more laid back with other teachers in the room because then they don’t always have to be helping people or making sure that everyone is doing what they are supposed to be doing. I think that every classroom should have at least two teachers in it. It seems to me that the teachers stress greatly decrease. I think then, they can really spend more time with one student explaining something; making sure that the student really understands it. The students in the Academy are all really great people. I would have to say compared to the ones in my other classes my classmates in hear are much more laid back and more well behaved. I think that one concept of that would have to be because of the amount of teachers we have in the classroom at once. Some students need a lot of attention and with the amount of teachers they can get it without distracting or causing a disturbance to the rest of the class. Also the students in this Academy class all have the urge to learn and most of them don’t screw of and disrupt the whole class. To me that really makes a difference when I’m trying to learn; and the fact that I can only learn when there is absolutely no distracts around me really helps.

Really the biggest reason why i like the Academy is really how much of a new experience it is. With a small class size then regular classes of 24 or 25 to only 16 students. The fact that the Academy is structured around the concept of learning threw project is really the way i learn best. I cant sit in a room and just listen to the teacher and take notes all day and expect to remember and really interpret everything. Another big reason is how creative we get to be with our projects. With how much freedom we get with our projects you could really go anywhere with them, with what criteria info they give you. I think that this experience of being in the Academy was so great I would absolutely do it next year. When I found out that the weren’t having it next year I was really confused and disappointed. Its hands down the best class that I've taken at Arrowhead and i really have learned so much and in such a new creative way. I now so many people who once I told them how it was they wanted to join. Lots of my friends learn like me; threw making projects and they all said that they aren't doing so well in there other classes taking notes and tests. I think that if we opened it up for next year sophomores, we would have so many students wanting to join!

Pearsonal Blog Jan.9- Jan.13

This week in academy we were very busy in every subject. With finals coming up we were reviewing in all of the subjects, going over the topics that the finals test is going to be on for each subject. Also we got lots of work time for our final projects. This week I would say we accomplished a lot in everything.

In English this week to review for the final is we practiced: commas, colons, semicolons, underlining, and quotes. Also we retook the test that we did in the beginning of the year for English to see what we knew, but this time it was to see what we remembered, and if we improved in what we were struggling at before. Retaking the same test over again made it seem so easy. From the begging of this year to now I think I really learned a lot. On Monday we have our final exam for English, I think I’m pretty well prepared.

In science this week we have been working a lot with the periodic table and chemical equations. We did the chemical equations all the time last year but I totally forgot how to do them. We also did a burning chemicals lab. I found it pretty fascinating how every chemical had a little different color when it started on fire. Some were neon green all the way up to dark almost black red. We used the Bunsen burners to set the chemicals on fire and turned off the lights so it looked pretty cool in the room once people started lighting chemicals up.

Social studies was really the only subject that we didn’t do that much with this week. All we did was in the beginning of the week we got to look at like 40 national geographic magazines. It was a pretty fun activity. We had to write down what we saw in the magazines that we looked at; to tell us what geography is.

In art this week we were finishing up our water color nature paintings that we have been working on for about 2 weeks. I had a really complicated picture and I wasn’t going to be able to finish it in time so I got to split my painting in half and only have to paint one of the halves. I’m not that great at painting and have never really enjoyed doing it but I think I’m starting to like it more with doing this project.

Pearsonal Blog Jan. 3- Jan. 6

This week in ILA, we work a lot with grammar in all of the subjects. Such as commas, semicolons, and plain colons. We worked with geography in social studies, in science, the periodic table and in art we worked on water coloring. Also during this week we had some time to work on our final project. I feel so stressed with all this work that were getting since it’s almost the end of the semester. My final project isn’t exactly getting off to a good start. I’m a little behind; I really haven’t even found what I really wanted to do yet.

In English, we had some quizzes on commas, semicolons, colons, underlining and more. I liked how we got a couple minutes to look over our study guide right before we took the test. I think by doing that I really knew the info when it came time to take the test. We practiced most of the rules by writing paragraphs for all of the subjects. These rules I learned last year so they weren’t that hard to take tests about. The only thing was that, I had a hard time remembering what I was supposed to underline, to what I was supposed to put in quotations.

In Social Studies our topic for the week was really working on knowing what demography was and the different parts of it. We had some practice, by applying the 5 terms to our own lives. Also we have to write a paragraph and apply our English rules that we just learned, for practice, about Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.  

Lastly, in science this week, we have been practicing with the periodic table. We have been for the past few weeks, really trying to get us to now our way around the big table. We have been reviewing a lot of the info that we have already learned about it. I found it a little easier to understand and remember after he reviewed it all again.