Write about a woman teacher who affected you in a positive way.

I’m sitting here turning this over and over in my head.  I hated all my female teachers for the most part.  I have always had issues with females in authority.

Course, there were only two or three male teachers I liked, too.  I guess I just hated authority in general in school.  Hee.

There was this one female teacher, though.  We’ll call her Ms. D.  She was my French teacher for two years in a row.  And she was awesomely cool.

We had this kid in our class who was pretty down on his luck.  He was taking French to boost his GPA.  He was failing his other courses and he already spoke French.  So he rarely did anything that wasn’t for credit and usually sat in the middle of the classroom doodling and hoping Ms. D would leave him alone.

He didn’t talk to many people.  Just me and his small circle of friends.  None of whom were in our class.

Ms. D would call on him regularly and have to repeat her question.  They would chatter back and forth making smart-assed comments to each other.  But Ms. D never overstepped her bounds as a teacher.  Everything she said to him was within her role as an educator. 

Once, B told her to go fuck herself.  Ms. D smiled and said, “If you can swear in French, you can swear at me all you want.  Otherwise, check the language at the door.”  That’s how Ms. D found out B was fluent in French.

I think the best conversation they had, though, was a couple weeks before school ended.

About halfway through the first quarter, Ms. D had B eating out of her hand.  He did the workbook pages even though he knew it all and got no credit for it.  He started tutoring kids who were floundering.  He even tried to teach me how to speak French with a French accent.

He failed miserably.  My mouth’s just not made that way.  Lol.

One day, Ms. D decided she was going to give extra credit to whoever had done the homework.  A lot of us hadn’t because she didn’t grade our homework.  But B had! He got all excited and reached into his knapsack to find…  His workbook missing.

In the beginning of the year, B would have gone off on a tirade of swearing and threats.  Ms. D would do what she could to calm him down and eventually send him to the principal.

This day, though, B said, “Fu… I mean fart.  Sorry, Ms. D.  I meant fart.”

Without missing a beat, Ms. D said, “Just like that? On command?”

B said, “Yeah. Or you have to give me a 4.0 at the end of the year.”

Ms. D smiled and said, “You’re getting a 4.5 at the end of the year.”

B almost fell out of his chair.  I guess he didn’t realize he’d gone above and beyond.

I’ve never had so much respect for a woman before.  Watching her take this kid who was doing nothing but fucking up and turn him around…

B graduated two years later.  Against all odds, being a child from a dysfunctional home in the projects.  Ms. D became his mentor.  He didn’t get straight A’s but his GPA never dropped below a 3.0.  That’s pretty amazing.

Ms. D taught me a lot about respect that year.  I had two other classes with B and the teachers treated him like scum.  And until Ms. D, he responded in kind.  But when he got nothing but respect from Ms. D, even when he was out of line, he began to mirror that with the teachers who were horrible to him.  And eventually, they started treating him as a human being.

I think that’s one of the reasons I try to find and bring out the good in people.  Why I try not to ever give up on them.  Why I try to help them rise up and beat the odds.  As much as I can, anyway.

Because back in high school I had this teacher.  And she beat the odds.

prompt found at SubmissiveGuide