I was always a good student. I was born with some natural “smarts” that served me well. I coasted for the vast majority of school. I rarely struggled. I rarely studied. Typically, I picked up everything I needed to be responsible for by just listening in class and doing my homework. I almost never took homework home. Most days I got it done before I ever left class. I found school boring and easy.
The most difficult thing about school for me was the social aspect. I was NOT CUTE after about 3rd grade. I was bookish, shy, and plain ugly. I had big, thick glasses and badly crooked teeth. The cherry on top of my ugly sundae was my curly, frizzy hair that my mother never knew what to do with. Her efforts made it worse 100% of the time. The picture I included is the worst and most embarrassing picture ever taken of me. It is my school picture from 6th grade. Gratefully, I wasn’t stuck looking like that forever. By about 9th grade I was doing my own hair, braces were a success, and I got contacts. I never turned into a beauty queen, but at least I don’t want to cry any time I look into the mirror like I did back then.
It is interesting to me that the height of my hideousness happened in 6th grade. That was the same year that I had my favorite teacher of all time. I never had another teacher like her. Her name was Mrs. Wroten. I reconnected with her recently and my whole year has been made… and it’s only February.
My 6th-grade year started with a dull thud. Rising 6th graders were supposed to read Little Women over the summer. Though I was a really good reader, the book didn’t hold my interest so I didn’t finish. On day one we had a test on the book and I failed it. That lead to Mrs. Wroten calling me to her desk. I was not a child who got in trouble at school. She called my name and I was instantly terrified. What happened next changed me as a human being for the rest of my life. She did confront me about not having read the book. What struck me, though, was how she spoke to me. She was gracious and kind. I told her, when I recounted this story to her, that her interaction felt kind of maternal to me in a way I had never experienced before. I did something wrong, and instead of anger, I received grace. Instead of shame, she offered understanding. It blew my little mind. She had my attention from that moment on.
Something unusual happened in Mrs. Wroten’s classroom. She challenged me. She had a whole secondary system set up for those of us who typically finished things early. There were always 3 or 4 more things to do when we thought we were done. They weren’t always easy, either. One of my favorites was a reading comprehension challenge. You couldn’t move to another level until you mastered the one before it. Completion of those things didn’t earn us a grade but earned us points that gained us access to special events – like a movie in the library. I never worked harder than I did in her class. The sheer genius of her secondary system was that it wasn’t mandatory. It was always up to me to decide to do extra. She, whether she intended to or not, taught me to be a go-getter. I actually used my brain that whole year.
Newton’s first law of motion states that if a body is at rest or moving at a constant speed in a straight line, it will remain at rest or keep moving in a straight line at constant speed unless it is acted upon by a force. (https://www.britannica.com/science/Newtons-laws-of-motion) I am using it, in this case, to describe theoretical motion. For K-5, I shared that I coasted. In 6th grade, Mrs. Wroten was the force that altered the course of my education. That is why I am so happy that I found her. I wanted her to know how special and impactful she was on my life.
This may sound crazy to you, but having such a successful school year made being an ugly duckling bearable. She engineered for me a sense of value. As fate would have it, she was only at that school one year. Because of that, she was the only teacher K-6 that didn’t have my brother first. I believe with my whole heart that God put her there for just me. I will be eternally grateful for her.
Who is the person for you that impacted your childhood the most?
