You Helped Mold Me

It has been a few days since the semester ends so now I am free writing an article about a teacher who helped mold me. For confidentiality, let us call her Mrs. Drew.

Mrs. Drew is a known terror teacher in our high school. She is an Emglish teacher who is fluent and has a way of making you feel nervous even if you know the answer. Or maybe that is just me and my social anxiety talking.

Anyway, Mrs. Drew, for all her strictness, is a kind woman. She challenges us in every way and she has that firm resolve and reassurance that she knows we can do it, even when we doubted ourselves.

I remember that this is the only English class where I managed to share my thoughts freely because as much as she does not sugarcoat things when we are wrong she is also not stingy with her compliments.

I remember that there was one time where she praised my choice of words when I recited and I have been over the moon for it. I cannot even remember the exact question as I was already panicking but still wanted to share some thiughts during the class discussion. I vaguely remembered my answer though, it was something that goes along the lines of "If we truly know ourselves, we are able to stay calm even when the whole world is in chaos"

The grace with which she handled the underhanded thing my classmates threw at her was amazing. The day she confronted our class about it, she did not name drop, she did blame us. I can still remember those words clearly.

You don't have to say sorry. I am the one who trusted you.

That statement is like a knife to the hearts of the people who actually like her.

The unnamed classmates posted some rabts about her. Cursing the workload that she gave us and being whiny about it.

Mrs. Drew told us that she could have been a lazy teacher. She could have made us do simple works that will not challenge us, that will make her job easier. However, she did not want us to get out of the class with no knowledge about the topics beyond the words written on the book.

With her I learned how to think more critically. I learned how to use context clues to better understand something. I learned that the trust I give to others is my responsibility and is not theirs to upheld. I learned a lot of things from her beyond what the lessons entailed.

The nail in the coffin

The thing that made her helped mold me was when I was absent for two-weeks due a battle almost lost. She visited us as my adviser along with two other teachers.

I remember that my sister was telling them about my journal during my bouts of depression. It was written in English and my sister said that it was well-written so it could not have been written by me. My family never really knew me which made it so easy to just give up all of it.

However, even if my teacher neither agreed nor disagreed with my sister's statement, she looked at me in the eyes as if telling me she knew I can write well. That one moment of trust is all I needed to go back to school again.

Another thing that stood out that day was her way of expressing concern for me. She said that it is better to seek help from a medicsl professional about my problems instead of belieing in superstitions. Mrs. Drew told me that if I ignore the problems I have now, it might be passed onto my future children.

This made me resolved to get better even if I am not sure about having children in the future. I do not want someone else, let alone my own child, to experience the darkness I had to go through. If she had not said that, I would have been pretending to be okay and then just suddenly disappear. Thankfully, she did, and until now, I used it as a motivation when I want to give up on healing myself.

I remember when I finally went back to school. It was the first day of major exams, I did not know any of the missed lessons but I decided it is bettet to attend right then instead of prolonging it.

I remember being surprised that out of the batch, I was the only one who managed to get a passing score on our English test with the score of 52/60. It was the lowest for the passing grade but I was the only one who managed to get a score like that.

I remember the proud and gentle look on Mrs. Drew's eyes when I stood up to hand my paper. Even the backhanded compliments of my competitive classmates were not enough to bother me then.

I will forever be thankful for Mrs. Drew. I do not know if she has any idea about how much she helped me, I never had the courage to say.

For every teacher out here, I want you to know that you have the ability to bring a student out of their darkness. Sure, you may not be able to change the whole world on your own but you can change a student's world with just yourself.

So for educators, I hope that you helped students find their paths instead of bringing them down that they stopped believing themselves. I hope your words will serve as their anchor during a storm instead of the waves that tries to drown them. Most importantly, I hope you know that there are students who appreciate what you do even if we are silent about it.

You can find more of my articles by clicking this link:  https://read.cash/@ZehraSky/week-1-june-2021-articles-summary-6e15cf71

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Thank you for reading and supporting me, everyone!