Empathy 101 with Mrs. Collins by Elizabeth

Empathy 101 with Mrs. Collins by Elizabeth - July 2014 Scholarship Essay

As a driven honors/AP student, I never fully understood what it was like to struggle in academically. Of course, I struggled to meet deadlines and find time to study for all of my exams because of my chosen workload but I thrived on the challenge and often excelled. For a very long time I simply thought that students who opted to take the easier classes at the school and then failed in these courses were unmotivated and ignorant.

Luckily, I had a teacher who taught me something I had never seen written in a syllabus: empathy. My freshman year, my English teacher suggested me to another teacher who was looking for an after-school tutor for some of her students. One Wednesday after school, I made the first of many trips to Mrs. Collin's room. Mrs. Collins taught reading to ninth and tenth graders. She hugged me the first time that I met her and I was taken aback by her overwhelming warmth.

She quickly paired me with a student named Alan who was struggling with an Algebra worksheet. I smiled and quickly prattled off equations for slope and steps for graphing before noticing the overwhelmed look of fear, confusion, and frustration on Alan's face.

"He can't speak English very well," Mrs. Collin's quietly told me.

I sunk. How am I going to a tutor a child who cannot understand me? And then I thought about all of the struggles Alan must face every day without being able to understand teachers or even communicate in order to make friends. However, there is a beautiful thing about math; it is the same in every language. I broke down each equation carefully and clearly, looking for clues from Alan that told me he did or did not understand. Mrs. Collins would smile at us from her desk where she worked with other students and after Alan finished his work and went home she came to speak with me.

Mrs. Collins apologized for the lack of warning but commended me on patience with Alan. Before that day, I had never known myself to be a patient person but Mrs. Collins encouragement made me believe it. I spent nearly every Wednesday for the rest of my high school career in her room with various students and their various struggles. I no longer looked down on these students who did not excel academically but admired their bravery that allowed them to struggle.

I learned more in the walls of Mrs. Collin's classroom than I have anywhere else in my entire life. Mrs. Collins was an amazing woman to make every student's struggle her own, including mine.