My Most Influential Teacher by Sadie

My Most Influential Teacher by Sadie - June 2021 Scholarship Essay

Going through the motions of moving schools and changing grades has led to me having countless interactions with many different teachers and instructors. Finding time and ways to form relationships with these educators who have gone through hundreds and thousands of students in their careers can be quite difficult. However, during my sophomore year of high school, I came across a teacher who would change everything for me. My third-period AP United States History class with Mr. Hibbs completely altered my life in the best ways possible.
Mr. Hibbs had a great reputation behind him for his humorous, comical and kind hearted personality. I was hesitant to register for his course because of its known immense workload and pressure brought by it being at the AP level, but through the year, he made everything feel natural. With my school year already being difficult because of the challenges brought by the Coronavirus, having to learn from him while being behind a screen was even tougher. Mr. Hibbs had been a victim of heart attack two years prior to this past school year, and has since been struggling with additional health concerns. These health concerns categorized him into being “at-risk” to the virus, so he taught remotely for the school year. He tried his best every day to make the learning in his classroom as enjoyable and fulfilling as possible. From cracking jokes at the best timing to reaching out to students personally to check in on how they were doing. Mr. Hibbs always found a way to create a light in what was a dark tunnel for me at the time. Of all the great stories I could tell from having taken his course, one will stick with me forever.
On one of our last days of this grueling year, Mr. Hibbs planned an activity that would impact my life eternally. I remember walking into class that day and noticing the slight shift in the organization of the desks in the classroom, with two groups of desks on both sides of the class facing each other, and one in the middle facing both sides. I was curious to find out what that day’s class would bring knowing that Mr. Hibbs always had tricks up his sleeve, but nothing would prepare me for what was to come. Mr. Hibbs started off the class period with his normal greetings to everyone, and asked us all to quietly take our seats. As I was doing what he had instructed, I noticed that there were three stacks of poker chips on his desk, one blue, one white and one red. After we were all seated, he began to tell us a story about a seminar he had signed up for on how to be a great teacher. He took this seminar because of all the great things he had heard about the lady who was instructing it, and how influential she had been among her past students. She did this one activity involving poker chips and self esteem, two things that don’t sound like they should intertwine, that stuck with him so strongly that he decided to do it with his future students.
After telling us the story of the seminar, Mr. Hibbs began to start the activity by describing how when we are all born, we don’t see anything wrong in the world. Our chip stack of self-esteem is filled to the brim with nothing to take away from it. Babies look in the mirror and smile thinking that they are the perfect human, and don’t even think to try and find anything wrong with themselves. As we start to grow older and are exposed to more people and more ideas, things begin to change. We start going through experiences and changes that can negatively change our self-esteem and start taking away chips from our precious self-esteem stack. Whether it be losing friends, break ups, family issues, or more, there are things that go on in life that can seriously alter how we feel about ourselves. As we begin to grow we become exposed to things like bullying, which I personally struggled with a lot during middle school, that can seriously damage the amount of chips in our stack. However, throughout this roller coaster that we call life, there are also things that happen that rebuild our self-esteem. Whether it be passing a test, receiving a compliment, or maybe even something as small as receiving a hello in the hallway. Even the smallest of kind gestures can add chips back into someone else's stack, and even back into your own. After giving his incredibly influential speech, Mr. Hibbs called up each student individually, and asked each of us to choose a poker chip. He then wrote our name on it, and told each of us something great about who we are as individuals. He gave us these poker chips not only to be memorabilia, but for us to know that we will always have at least one chip in our stack, and to never give up.
He was the most influential teacher I have had because he taught me that you’re never alone. Everyone has something that they’re going through that you may not know about. Being kind to people will be something that can stick with them forever. You never know when someone could be on their last chip, so always choose kindness.