My First and Most Influential Teacher by Irene

My First and Most Influential Teacher by Irene - March 2013 Scholarship Essay

My first year of school ever was my hardest. Shy, closed-up, scared, and afraid: it was what I was as a five-year old child entering Kindergarten, and knowing very little English. Everything around me seemed so foreign and unrelated. I felt so far away from home and closed up in this new world around me. It may seem like nobody remembers much from their first years of school, and that may be true, but what I remember is my first teacher ever: my Kindergarten teacher: Mrs. Kallfa.
Sitting in a circle of students facing the board, we looked at pictures and repeated after our teacher. “Jug”, said the teacher. And the students repeated loudly and boldly, “JUG”. Mrs. Kallfa asked me, “Irene, how do you say that in YOUR language?” Too shy to answer, I told her that I have forgotten. But I remember breaking free from my shell more and more every time Mrs. Kallfa would focus her attention on me and ask about my Ukrainian background, and language that I grew up speaking. This lightened up my heart every day as I would walk into her classroom, and it gave me the desire to learn English.
Mrs. Kallfa not only taught me like she did the rest of the students, but whole-heartedly put aside the extra effort to get to know me personally and help me break free from the language barrier that was holding me back from many things. I would not have learned the English language so fast and with as much passion as my Kindergarten teacher has put into me through her kind actions and caring heart.