Names: _____________________________ _____ Date: July 29, 2019

GROUP ACTIVITY #1
a) Read the text (skim and scan)
b) Highlight the part of speeches used in the text (noun, adjectives, verbs, pronouns, etc.)
c) Underline the elements in this text (essential information)
ACTIVITY # 2
Compare the text and find what makes it the same and different. Use the diagram to
compare and contrast

WHAT KIND OF TEXT IS THIS?

___________________________________________________________________________

My name is Michael Smith and I was born on the 30th of August, 1967 in Long Beach,
California. My parents were Eddie Smith and Joan Smith. Both of my parents are deceased.
My mom died at the age of 57 in 1994 from lung cancer which was the result of smoking her
whole lifetime. My father died at the age of 69 in 2006 from a massive heart attack, which
was also the likely result from a lifetime of smoking. Fortunately I have been smart enough to
avoid that bad habit.

My early childhood was a typical middle class environment circa the 1960's. My dad worked
for Simpson Buick as a parts salesman and my mom was a stay at home mother. I had a
happy, normal childhood as an only child, leaving me somewhat spoiled. My mom and dad
divorced when I was eight years old and both remarried within a year or so of the divorce.
My dad remained married to my stepmom Bev until his death. My mom would marry two
more times. My first stepdad Vince became a big part of my life and I maintained close
contact with him until his death in 2006, two days after my real dad died. Yes, that was a
very bad week, losing both of my dads.

Growing up with split parents was not especially difficult since each of my parents kept me
out of their divorce and they got along fine at events where both of them were present. I lived
with my mom until I was 16 and in high school. By my sophomore year in high school I had
begun to hang around with friends that got me into a lot of trouble with a number of things
including smoking pot and drinking. I was rapidly heading down a negative path, but was
fortunate enough to notice it before I had done any serious damage. I moved in with my dad
and changed high schools and friends.

With the fresh start I was able to finish high school without further incident, graduating from
Downey High School in 1985. Even with my questionable behavior earlier in my life I had
always wanted to become a police officer, which I could not do until I was 21 years of age.
So, to kill time and stay out of trouble I joined the United States Army immediately after
turning 18. I joined the army and was sent to Fort Benning, Georgia for basic training,
advanced infantry training, and finally airborne jump school. After becoming a paratrooper
(11B1P, Airborne Infantry) I was assigned to Bravo Company, 2/325th Airborne Infantry
Regiment.

What stands out the most about my time in the army are the extremes that you are subjected
to. Some of my happiest memories and some of my worst memories come from my time in
the army. One thing that I am sure of is that it shaped me to become the man that I am now.
The army really straightened me out from my troubled teenage years. When I came out of the
army I had put on 50 solid pounds and was old enough to attempt to become a police officer.

Fresh out of the service I waited on tables and did some bartending while in the long
application process for law enforcement. I applied to the Long Beach Police Department, the
Los Angles Police Department, and the California Highway Patrol. My hope and dream was
to be accepted by the Long Beach Police Department and it came true for me. I was accepted
into the Long Beach Police Academy on July 10th, 1988. My military experience definitely
made the police academy much easier for me. I was already conditioned to withstand the
extreme stress of the police academy. The only difficulty I had in the police academy was a
number of injuries suffered during it, but I was able to continue in spite of them. I attribute
this to my time in the army as well because I had learned to "Play through the pain." During
the time that I was in the police academy I was living with my girlfriend. Shortly after
graduating from the police academy we made the mistake of getting married. As so happens
in law enforcement we ended

up divorced two years later, which was a mutual decision and really the best thing for both of
us. Fortunately, (and unlike many other police officers, both male and female) she is my only
ex- wife.

After five months I graduated from the police academy and was assigned as a police rookie in
training for the Patrol Division. My field training period went quickly and I was able to
complete field training without any problems. It became immediately clear to me that I had
made the right career choice. The excitement of being a police officer lived up to all my
expectations. I literally enjoyed the police work so much that I looked forward to going to
work and I could not believe that I was getting paid for it. The job only got better as I became
more experienced, leading to more confidence that I could handle the job regardless of what
came along.

During my career in law enforcement I worked in patrol as an officer, later as a field training
officer, and finally as a patrol sergeant. Over the course of my career I also worked in
detectives, in the Gang Enforcement Section, and as a detective sergeant. One of the best
things about being a police officer is that once what you are doing becomes routine or boring,
you can change what you are doing. By the time I had been a patrol officer and field training
officer for five years and beginning to burn out on it I was able to go to detectives. This gave
me a new dimension of experience and I learned a lot during my years as a detective,
particularly while I was assigned to the Gang Enforcement Section. I did this for several
years and eventually became an acting detective sergeant in gangs.

After my time in detectives and the Gang Enforcement Section I decided to return to the
patrol division as a patrol sergeant. Of all of the assignments I had as a police officer being a

patrol sergeant was easily my favorite. In law enforcement sergeants are the middle men in
between the patrol officers (aka "The Troops") and the lieutenants and above (aka "The
Brass"). Unlike many careers where being the middle man is a bad thing ("Being stuck in the
middle"), in law enforcement I found the opposite to be true. As a patrol sergeant you don't
get stuck with the routine paper calls that the patrol officers do, but you can still handle calls
that are interesting, require a supervisor, or are more complicated. While being a sergeant
does bring around a lot of paperwork, it is still less than the ranks above you often have to
handle.

My retirement from law enforcement came sooner than I would have liked because of a
number of injuries sustained in the line of duty. The primary of these injuries required having
my spine fused at the L5-S1. This injury alone was enough to end my law enforcement
career. I miss my time in law enforcement nearly every day. But, I try to look at it as getting
to do a whole career of doing something that I loved. My father worked at the same place for
30 years and hated every day of it. I got to spend a slightly shortened career doing something
I loved.

Since my retirement I have run a private investigations company that I built from the ground
up. I'm now going to school for a bachelor's degree in psychology and will move on to a
master's degree afterwards. I am planning to go into counseling for police officers and
military veterans. Both police and military are fields that are likely to cause the need for
counseling, but each of those careers are often closed to outsiders. As a veteran of both the
military and law enforcement I believe that I have the insight to be helpful to both groups,
and share a common ground with them that may make it easier for them to open up to me.

I will close out this autobiography with the most important thing in my life, my family. I am
married to my best friend, Amanda. We knew each other and were just close friends for the

first five or six years but we became a couple nine years ago and have been married for eight
years. Neither of us can have children, but we have a large family of dogs and cats that are
our "kids." All of our animals are rescues, some of which we have bottle fed from birth when
the animal's mother died during birth. It makes us a happy, close knit pack of two people,
three dogs, and two cats.

TEXT # 2

Helen Adams Keller was born on June 27, 1880 in Tuscumbia, Alabama. In 1882, she was
stricken by an illness that left her blind and deaf. Beginning in 1887, Keller's teacher, Anne
Sullivan, helped her make tremendous progress with her ability to communicate, and Keller
went on to college, graduating in 1904. In 1920, Keller helped found the ACLU. During her
lifetime, she received many honors in recognition of her accomplishments.

Early Life

Helen Keller was the first of two daughters born to Arthur H. Keller and Katherine Adams
Keller. She also had two older stepbrothers. Keller's father had served as an officer in the
Confederate Army during the Civil War. The family was not particularly wealthy and earned
income from their cotton plantation. Later, Arthur became the editor of a weekly local
newspaper, the North Alabamian.

Keller was born with her senses of sight and hearing, and started speaking when she was just
6 months old. She started walking at the age of 1.
Loss of Sight and Hearing

In 1882, however, Keller contracted an illness—called "brain fever" by the family doctor—
that produced a high body temperature. The true nature of the illness remains a mystery
today, though some experts believe it might have been scarlet fever or meningitis. Within a
few days after the fever broke, Keller's mother noticed that her daughter didn't show any
reaction when the dinner bell was rung, or when a hand was waved in front of her face.
Keller had lost both her sight and hearing. She was just 19 months old.

As Keller grew into childhood, she developed a limited method of communication with her
companion, Martha Washington, the young daughter of the family cook. The two had created
a type of sign language, and by the time Keller was 7, they had invented more than 60 signs
to communicate with each other. But Keller had become very wild and unruly during this
time. She would kick and scream when angry, and giggle uncontrollably when happy. She
tormented Martha and inflicted raging tantrums on her parents. Many family relatives felt she
should be institutionalized.
A Formal Education

In 1890, Keller began speech classes at the Horace Mann School for the Deaf in Boston. She
would toil for 25 years to learn to speak so that others could understand her. From 1894 to
1896, she attended the Wright-Humason School for the Deaf in New York City. There, she
worked on improving her communication skills and studied regular academic subjects.

Around this time, Keller became determined to attend college. In 1896, she attended the
Cambridge School for Young Ladies, a preparatory school for women. As her story became
known to the general public, Keller began to meet famous and influential people. One of
them was the writer Mark Twain, who was very impressed with her. They became friends.
Twain introduced her to his friend Henry H. Rogers, a Standard Oil executive. Rogers was so
impressed with Keller's talent, drive and determination that he agreed to pay for her to
attend Radcliffe College. There, she was accompanied by Sullivan, who sat by her side to
interpret lectures and texts.

'The Story of My Life'

By this time, Keller had mastered several methods of communication, including touch-lip
reading, Braille, speech, typing and finger-spelling. With the help of Sullivan and Sullivan's
future husband, John Macy, Keller wrote her first book, The Story of My Life. It covered her
transformation from childhood to 21-year-old college student. Keller graduated, cum laude,
from Radcliffe in 1904, at the age of 24.

In 1905, Sullivan married John Macy, an instructor at Harvard University, a social critic and
a prominent socialist. After the marriage, Sullivan continued to be Keller's guide and mentor.
When Keller went to live with the Macys, they both initially gave Keller their undivided
attention. Gradually, however, Anne and John became distant to each other, as Anne's
devotion to Keller continued unabated. After several years, the couple separated, though were
never divorced.