The 180°
How English Got Turned Around
At the age of 12 any educational help from a teacher would be helpful and benefit you. Well not in the case of Mrs. Linda Perla-Mullins. Mrs. Perla-Mullins was my sixth grade English teacher. To begin the year she did not seem too bad; she was nice and seemed to be interested in how she was teaching her students. Being in the new setting, the new chapter in my life I was expecting the helping, kind and caring type of teacher I had previously experienced. But I got the complete opposite. Linda was the devil to me.
English was not my favorite subject so I never really gave it my all. I just simply found it boring. Being in her class helped my reasoning for not putting my best foot forward. She never really taught us, just kind of talked without getting into detail, always moved at her own pace, and if you did not understand what was going on you were on your own. You could ask for help, and she would briefly help you in class, but she would just repeat what she had said to the class as a whole. Although it was her duty as the teacher to help you if you didn’t understand what the concept was, she did not like to take extra time to help you.
There’s one time that will always be in my head that absolutely killed me. I was having trouble writing a paper (on something I was not interested in) so I had asked her if I could stay after school and have some help. She said she would be there. But she wasn’t. That was the day I gave up on English. All because she didn’t care to help a struggling kid for twenty minutes. Although I should have just moved forward and forgotten it, I didn’t. But fortunately, my negative mindset changed when I started seventh grade.
When I got the letter in the mail informing me I would be on team Navy (which just divided the student body into two separate teams for the teachers) I knew my mindset had a chance to change, and it did. I couldn’t be more thankful for my seventh grade English teacher, Lori Shattuck. She was not only my teacher, she was my friend. She liked to act like a child and fool around, but get work done in a fun way so it wasn’t painful to do. She was the person I could count on to always help me. Not only did I know her in the classroom, I knew her outside the classroom too. I played basketball with her nephew who is also one of my best friends. She changed my attitude on reading, writing, and English in general.
Lori knew I struggled reading and writing about things that didn’t interest me. So she introduced me to an author named Mike Lupica. Lupica wrote about sports, making them seem real, and me being an athlete interested me right away. He wrote about the sports I played and still play. The book that got me back into reading and writing was Summer Ball. It was about basketball, and at the time I was in basketball season so I could really relate to the pictures and scenarios that he was creating.
One specific scenario was when he had to take and make the game winning shot, which also happened to me the previous week in which I had started the book (I made the shot). When he was describing all the thought of missing and being a let down going through his head, he brought me back to the final seconds of my game.
Not only did she turn me onto good literature, Lori was always all over me about the work. She would even read the book at the same time I was and give me quizzes so I had no choice but to read. When I had to write, she always made it a point to sit down with me in class for at least fifteen minutes to help me. She didn’t care how long it took to get done, as long as it was done to the best of my ability. She knew how to connect with me. She made me forget what happened in the previous years and helped me move forward; she knew I wanted to succeed, so she made sure of that.
There are teachers who will ruin things for you, change you and make you want to quit. But all it takes is that one teacher, friend, and/or mentor to change your mindset. To this day I am still in contact with Lori, still see her, text her and communicate with her whenever I want. She even still sometimes helps me if I need it. I will never forget and will never be more grateful for what she did for me. She helped change my outlook not only for English, but school in general. She taught me that no matter how hard something is or how much it affects you, life isn’t always fair, you just have to keep chuggin.
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