How a Teacher Saved My Educational Life
I love books. Probably as much as anyone. My home library looks like the picture I chose for this piece. I’ve read MOST of the books I have, but I have a never-ending stack of books all clamoring for my attention, waiting in the queue. I am always behind. My reading life didn’t start out like that at all. Thanks to a very wise second-grade teacher, my entire educational success came about by one simple sentence.
As a first grader, I struggled. My itinerant family moved five times during my first-grade year. Those are stories for another day. However, by second grade I was so shaken up and scared at school that I was far behind my classmates, and certainly had no skills in the basics of reading. My usual day was to cry when separated from my older two sisters as we went to our classrooms, then wet my pants, only to have my mother come pick me up and take me home. I am sure I was so frightened by the separation from my sisters because I thought my family would move again while I was at school, and be gone when I came home. Whooping Cough caused me to miss weeks of school that first year as well. By the middle of my second year of school, my frustration and daily tears must have been a huge burden to my dear teacher, Mrs. Vick. We had settled down a bit by then, and I was in the same school each day.
