Like this:

In the middle of my seventh grade year, when I dreamed incessantly of being a new person who had nothing in common with the shy, chubby girl I was, I had to stay after school to make up a test.  As I sat by myself in Mrs. Fuller’s room, concentrating on my paper, I felt a firm hand on my shoulder  and heard Mrs. Fuller’s quiet voice in my ear.  “You are a nice person,” she whispered.  “Every day, you listen in class.  You hand in your work on time and you write well.”  I think that was all she said.  It wasn’t a lot.  She didn’t tell me that I would someday do something great.  She didn’t tell me that I was the best student in the class or that she had never seen such work from a seventh grader.  But I will never forget the feeling of elation that spread through my whole body as a sat there.  Even today, as I write about the experience, I feel a lump in my throat.  Did I look up into her face and thank her for the kind words?  I don’t remember.  It’s more likely that I just mumbled and walked away.   But I remember that wanted to skip down the hall to my locker as I left the building.  I felt transformed.

I am the parent of a seventh grader this year.  Many days when I drop her off, I breathe a sigh of relief that I do not have to walk through those doors.  I have yet to meet anyone who looks back on junior high school as “the good old days”.  I am thankful for those teachers who are willing put themselves back in that setting, believing that they can make a difference in our children’s lives at a time when patience and affirmation is most needed.

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