Going through high school is supposed to be the best time of your life, hanging out with friends, maybe getting into trouble. Yet for me, High School wasn’t a great experience like some people have, and it wasn’t because I was teased or picked on by other students, no for me teachers were the real enemy.
So, I wasn’t the best student, I didn’t study and I barley did my homework. I had such bad anxiety (I still do) that simply going to school was made out to be an impossible task. It was difficult for me to understand what I was going through and to find a way to cope with it. The people that I thought would understand and maybe help me through a time where I needed some kind of guidance left me out in the cold to freeze to death completely alone.
My senior year of high school wasn’t the best time in my life, my best friend graduated early, I was in a class with freshmen because I needed the credit, and I had a full class schedule. I was depressed, anxious, and overwhelmed, and because of all that there were some days that I just couldn’t make it to school, days were staying in bed felt like the best option. I would stay home sometimes all week, it wasn’t that I need the week to stay in bed is was the fact that going back to school would come with the ridicule and with questions that for some reason had to be in front of the whole class.
When I would go back to school I would try to hide from the teachers so I wouldn’t be questioned about where I was? or, why I was out? in front of the whole class. And sometimes when I was especially unlucky they would make side comments again in front of the whole class about how I was failing because I was out. So you can see how that could make someone not want to be in that situation, because of that the cycle kept going. There was one time in particular, that I was talking to my economics teacher about my grade and how I was planning on going to college, and her response was “(laughing) you think you’re going to college.” I didn’t know what to say or what to do, I just couldn’t believe that a teacher a person that was supposed to encourage me to better my education, not to squander it.
I still think back to that day, the way I felt at that moment still bothers me, still makes me feel like I’m not smart enough or good enough to do anything. I don’t think that teachers understand the impact that they have on their students, they can make a student succeed and grow beyond their expectations or make the student feel small and not good enough to pursue their dreams.
Almost 10 years later and those teachers still have an impact on my life, but instead of using it as a negative, I try to turn it into a positive and use it to drive me to mature into an adult that probably most of them didn’t think that I could be.
The simple message here is that no matter what grade your students are in, they still look to you for guidance, use that to help them find out who they are and what they want to pursue in the next chapter of their lives because what you do affects them whether you see it or not.
