As the holidays are upon us, it seems fitting to do a classic school essay. No, it’s not What I Want for Christmas, but close! It’s the teacher who most inspired me.
I spent the majority of my scholastic career in honors/advanced/AP classes. I think this trend started in junior high (as they called it back then) and continued through my senior year. However, I never felt like I belonged there.
Friends that were in general classes would make a few comments about how I should know about this or the other thing since I was an Honors student. They didn’t believe any worries I had about passing tests.
Friends that were in the Honors classes seemed to get it so much quicker than I did. They would quote authors and books that I had never heard of. They didn’t seem worried about any tests or assignments.
My senior year, I was panicking about passing my AP test for English. English was my favorite subject. I loved to read, I loved to write, but there was still so much I didn’t know. The students around me seemed so much smarter.
One day, I told my fears to my AP English teacher. I still remember the confused look on her face. “Why would you be worried? You’re doing fine.” I finally confessed to her, “yes, but I don’t belong here.”
“Well, of course you do!” she responded. “You’re here, aren’t you?”
That stopped me in my tracks. After so many years of thinking, this year they’re going to find me out, it had never happened. Every year, I had been welcomed back into those Honors classes. I may not have been the absolute smartest girl in the class, but I was still there. Every year.
And while I didn’t get the highest score, I did indeed pass that AP test.
15 years later, that teacher and I spoke again at a reunion. And I told her how I remembered that story, had repeated it to many others. And she said she’s told every class of hers since about that conversation.
Happy Holidays to all the memorable teachers, and all the students that work hard to improve their skills every day!
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April McCaffery is the LA Single Parenting Examiner, an LA Moms contributor, and writes her personal blog, It’s All About Balance.
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I have a couple inspirational teachers as well that made all the difference to me.
Great story.
While I have fond memories of my AP English teacher who transformed my self-concept (from can’t write to could write… if willing to re-write an absurd number of times), this post brought to mind a recent post I did on my scariest teacher… for the dark side of this classical essay, see: http://tiny.cc/Lc1CL.
Namaste
It’s a touching story, some teachers are born to be teachers. I wish I had a teacher to remember this way but I always kept distant relationships with my teachers, I didn’t want to get involved even if my grades were good. Our high school reunion is getting close and I am not sure I want to go. High school is not on the top of my nicest memories.
Education in the broadest sense is any act or experience that has a formative effect on the mind, character or physical ability of an individual. In its technical sense education is the process by which society deliberately transmits its accumulated knowledge,cisco practice tests skills and values from one generation to another.
Education in the broadest sense is any act or experience that has a formative effect on the mind, character or physical ability of an individual. In its technical sense education is the process by which society deliberately transmits its accumulated knowledge,cisco practice tests skills and values from one generation to another.