Teacher inspiration by Madeline

Teacher inspiration by Madeline - January 2025 Scholarship Essay

In my Junior year of high school, I was lucky enough to be placed in one of the most amazing English classes. For most of high school, I struggled a lot with trying to understand what my "thing" was, it seemed like everyone around me was great and passionate about one thing, and for it being high school, everyone seemed so sure of themselves and what they were good at. I was involved in choir, student congress, and so many extracurriculars but I was never able to pin what about everything connected back to me. It wasn’t until this Junior year English class that I understood what all of my traits connected to. My teacher, Mr. Wenokur, is a man I will likely be forever indebted to simply due to the culture and environment he created in his class. He allowed every one of the students to be completely and wholeheartedly themselves without any fear of judgment. At the end of every school year, he wrote each student a personal letter, one in which has stuck with me and lived in every nightstand I’ve had since given to me. In this letter, he told me how much he had seen himself in me, in the way I know no bounds in getting to know people and leading with humility, and how much of a leader he saw in me as well. It was not until this class that I realized that not only was I a leader, but I wanted to be a leader and the person that he described in that letter for the rest of my life. This class had given me the courage to understand myself in more ways than one but especially to understand that no matter what I pursued, as long as I had my heart and mind set into it, I could and would do it, no matter how difficult. Due to this English class full of 16-year-old kids and one teacher who saw me, I believe in myself.