In class assignment: A
teacher that made an impact on you, either negatively or positively
Miss Francesca Anderson was my sixth grade homeroom
teacher. That was her first year
teaching at St. Luke’s School. She drove
a gold colored Mercedes Benz that the parents all gossiped that she bought her
Mercedes with her child support. She
also had a very young son, who she had just won full custody of after the nasty
divorce battle. She had cool, feathered
90’s hair and the most perfect, non-Catholic School standard penmanship. I worked tirelessly to perfect the way she
wrote the letter A. She was definitely the
coolest lay teacher in the school, and I felt privileged to be in her first
class.
That year was the height of mental bullying for me. This made me depressed and confused. I always felt
like the ugliest girl in the room, and the hurtful words of my classmates
pushed me over the edge on a daily basis. It was so bad that I would pray that these kids would come down with mono so I could go to school in some kind of peace. My mom used to
call me out of school for “mental health days” on mornings after a bad
episode. On days that I did attend
classes, Miss Andersons room was the only safe zone for me. She was the only teacher that would put a
stop to any teasing that she heard. She
would share stories and try as hard as she could to convince me that they weren’t
worth the stress and tears. The very
beginning of the day and, more importantly, the end of the day were the only
parts of the school day that were bearable for me because being in that
classroom was the only place in the school where I felt like a normal human.
1 comment:
Oh my God.... I agree. I loved Ms. A! I was so pleased when she came to my graduation party, and I tried so hard to get my capital A to be just the same. I think it still is. I loved how she made us all read the end of Where the Red Fern Grows at home so we could cry in peace. And I wonder all the time where she is and what she is doing. We should try to find her!
As for the other stuff, I am sad to think we suffered the same things. I never knew you felt the same way I did (I have actually refused to accept friend requests from some of those people and others I have seen out in public and refused to acknowledge). I still feel damaged from my years at that terrible place. I know my parents would have sent me somewhere else (my worst year was 4th).
For whatever it is worth now, some 20 years later, I always thought you were one of the coolest people I knew. I still talk about our sleepovers, and I still feel horribly guilty about that time at your grandparents' house (it's something I regret enormously). I truly hope that other than that incident, I never did anything that caused you pain.
Anyway, I don't know how I would have survived that place without you, Mandy, and Gena.
<3 Megan M.
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