Snakes Are Not Bad After All by Megan

Snakes Are Not Bad After All by Megan - March 2021 Scholarship Essay

A snake in a classroom is unheard of. I am deathly afraid, I think snakes are creepy, dangerous and vicious, definitely not something I would trust around second graders. I have never been good at math. To this day, it is not my strongest subject nor something I want to pursue in the future. However, I get by my math classes with typically good grades and score fine on standardized tests. This is all because of my second grade teacher. Multiplication felt like running a marathon. I can never decide if it was because of my math induced dyslexia or lack of focus, however I knew multiplication was not my strong suit leading me to hate math in general. My second grade teacher saved me.

Everyone enjoys doing things they are good at. At the time of my second grade struggles I was engulfed into competitive gymnastics. I was good at it, I won meets, coaches liked me, and it was something I enjoyed doing. In my small mind I didn't understand why I would voluntarily spend time practicing math when I wasn't excelling and not enjoying it. Well, I needed to, because if not then I was going to fail second grade. My parents threatened everything: gymnastics, friends, dessert, etc. However, nothing was working. I needed patience and a boost of confidence. That is just what my teacher gave me.

After failed attempts of parents help and multiple tutors, my last resort was to stay after school everyday to get help from my teacher. I was embarrassed and didn't want my peers to know about my failures, however I needed it. She simply told me to tell my classmates I was staying after to play with the snake, this was far from the truth so I thought. I hate snakes, especially this one, but I hated math more and everyone knew that. Day after day we would meet and work on multiplication, memorization really, and at the end of our sessions I would watch her feed the snake. It became routine, and I started to enjoy it. Her help consisted of encouraging me to practice and giving me a kind and patient sense of urgency to focus on math and improve my skills, nothing technical, simply a confidence boost. Slowly my math improved and so did my relationship with the snake. Eventually I didn't need the extra help and I was back on track with multiplication although I was still less than my peers. However, this teacher gave me the moral needed to pull through and get by a bump in the road. I finally learned that maybe math wasn't so bad after all, and neither are snakes.