I was sort of blind until 6th grade – and nobody knew it. This sounds crazy, but it explains a lot of my own experiences and how I’ve approached my own education. My last name started with a “W” so, in most of my classroom experiences I was seated near the back of the classroom, sometimes THE back of the classroom. We were a small school and so I had the same teacher for math, science and for history. In this teacher’s class, a student named David sat in front of me in almost all my classes, from the 2nd grade through the 6th grade. I could never, ever see the chalkboard. I was constantly asking people around me what the teacher was writing on the board. Daily, I would borrow David’s glasses and scribble down as many notes as I could before the teacher erased them and moved on to the next topic. To say I was lost was an understatement. I was labeled a “problem” student and didn’t get very good grades. “Talkative” was written on every report card and progress report. Nobody bothered to ask me WHAT I was talking about, to find out WHY I was talking. The one exception was in my English classroom in 4th through 6th grade, where Mr. T made me sit in the front. I suspect he did so because I was the talkative kid. What happened, however, was that this was the only class I could actually SEE what was happening on the board and was so engaged that, English became my best subject – and later, my favorite, because I actually was learning something, anything. Everyone else had written me off as a student who didn’t care, but not Mr. T. Perhaps he knew there was something more going on, but because I felt like he believed in me, allowed me to start believing in myself (and Mr. T telling my mom I needed glasses helped!). Nobody else had taken the time to really ‘see’ me, but Mr. T did, and this allowed me to see myself differently as well.
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