When I met Anna, she was inside of herself.
This isn’t uncommon with teenagers. The high school years seem to be ripe with a lack of self-confidence and misunderstood emotions, and this was no exception. But with Anna, she was ready to put all of that behind her, and thankfully, I was given the gift of witnessing her to take those first few steps.
It was the first day of class, in my first year of teaching. Quietly, but firmly, she confided in me that she just wanted to be able to take her ELA class with the rest of the students. “I’m not very good with English,” she said, “but maybe you can help me.”
Isn’t that music to a teacher’s ears? Oh for a roomful of such requests… yet little did I realize how much I would come to appreciate and admire this young woman.
Anna had a learning disability, but it strictly affected her academics, and nothing else. Socially, she was quiet, but amiable. She was great at sports, and an avid piano player. Yet while she knew she wasn’t gifted at school, she also wasn’t able to understand why she couldn’t learn like her peers – especially when she could clearly see the difference between herself and the others in “special” separate classes. On the outside, she looked just like everybody else, but the reality was, she didn’t learn like everyone else.
I had already, of course, been told about Anna from the special education department. The goal was indeed just that: to try and include her in the classroom as much as possible, providing any extra help so that she could take ELA with her classmates. I looked forward to the challenge, but I had no idea what this would turn out like.
So for the next three years, Anna took ELA with her peers. By grade 11, I had only a miniscule class of four students, but I had three different levels: 20-1, 20-2, and 20-4. Every test needed 3 versions, and every project needed 3 different expectations. But in the end, Anna learned about Macbeth and Huckleberry Finnwith the rest of the class.
Needless to say, once Anna believed that this was actually possible, that she could succeed in this if she really wanted to – it was like she was a whole new person.
She was determined. She was growing in self-confidence. And she worked her butt off.
I’m not saying that every day was roses after that. I could tell that she still struggled. She would get frustrated that others wouldn’t study for a test, and they would still do better than her, after hours of review. She would hate any extra attention from an adult, especially during class. She would have those moments that she just wanted to give up, because it was too hard. At one point, it finally came out that neither she (nor, she believed, anyone else), expected her to graduate with her peers in Grade 12 – she had more or less decided to leave school after grade 10 to save herself some stress and disappointment.
But she didn’t.
So while so many other senior students start to peter off on their work habits during the last months of the school year, Anna put in more work hours than ever, often late into the night. She completed an entire extra course in less than 2 months, squeezing it in at the end of a semester, on top of her regular workload… pulling off a 65% average in the class.
Not bad for a girl who never thought she’d graduate.
I know that in the years to come, Anna will remain a story of inspiration to me – not one about how I can “make a difference” in a student’s life… but an admiration of those who give the most when they have no more to give. Anna overcame obstacles that I would have tripped over, and I see her as an encouragement to keep going for the goals and pursuits that I have in life. As she so often liked to say, “With God, all things are possible.” With her literary comprehension level, understanding Biblical text was no easy task, but it was one piece of truth that she fully understood.
So next June, I hope to come back and see Anna cross that stage, and accept the Diploma that she has worked so hard for. She is no longer within herself. She has become herself. And it’s breathtakingly beautiful.
I have a lot of stories and moments in teaching I’m not proud of – times I got too frustrated, or too impatient; when I got too hard on myself, or spent so much time obsessing with things gone wrong that I forgot to see the little things that I could enjoy. But with Anna, she reminded me why I ever taught in the first place…and that’s something to hold onto.
So that’s what I’ve decided to do: I’m going to look for more Annas out there.
Because God knows I still have a few more things to learn from kids like her.
*Name has been changed
