When I Could Not Read by Kayla

When I Could Not Read by Kayla - March 2013 Scholarship Essay

"Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn." -- Benjamin Franklin
I was seven years old when we moved into my uncle’s basement. It was a rough transition time for my mother and me, because my parents were no longer together and we no longer had a home outside of the paneled walls of that basement. It was not an unhappy time, but any child displaced in such an unfamiliar environment would struggle accordingly. My mother, trying to get expenses paid and a place of our own, worked construction, which left me often with even more unfamiliar babysitters and daycare facilities.
It was around this time that I was diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), which explained a lot of difficulties at school. At that age, I could not read, I could not do the math problems my teachers assigned, and I had very few friends, as my mind often flitted around in some daydream instead of paying attention to my surroundings.
所有这些transitions at home and roadblocks to my educational success, my self-esteem hit a childhood low point, and my teachers denied me many hours of fun activities to have me sit inside and tediously pick away at incomprehensible problems and words. My second grade teacher, Mrs. Turner, however, took a special interest in me.
I have so many clear memories of things she said or did, but one sticks out in my mind. One time, after a long day of messing up on many of my projects and missing valuable information because of daydreams, she pulled me aside. “I know it’s hard to pay attention. I have ADD, too,” she said at one point, “But I went through college, and now I get to do what I enjoy the most: Teach children.”
Now, I often think about that conversation, and the many specific instances when she stood up for me at school, called my home to make valuable connections with my busy mother, and made sure to repeat things if it didn’t seem like I was paying attention. She truly believed in me, when other teachers I had did not.
When I think about her now, I imagine the joy on her face when I explain to her that believing in me was a good choice. I want to tell her now, “You believed in me when I couldn’t read, now I’m an English and Japanese double major at the University of Maryland, on my way to Japan to teach English once I graduate!” She truly was, and still is, a huge influence on my life. Even to this day when people tell me the things I cannot do, I rewind to remember the impossibilities I have already accomplished.