At the age of 13, I was taught the importance of accepting who you are and that its okay to have insecurities.
I was in the seventh grade, I always struggled with school, it never came easy for me. Especially when it came to math. My math teacher Mr. Lawlor would spend countless hours a week helping me understand the subject until I could perfect it. This helped bring up my confidence, especially since I just lost an abundant amount of weight and trying to get over the insecurity of being overweight. When I was younger my parents became divorced. It was a hard time for me with my dad in and out of my life then eventually completely out of my life. I would turn to food for comfort, which this eventually lead to me being 70 pounds overweight. A couple of years later my mom would take me to the gym and on a diet and i lost the weight Right around the time of seventh grade, I was still dealing with some insecurity. But with Mr. Lawlor, taking the extra time to help me understand and help me succeed, that brought my confidence up. The impact he had on me is the reason why I want to become a teacher one day.
When I was in high school I dealt with a lot of drama with girls, this caused me to feel very alone in school. My algebra teacher, Mrs. Monro would talk to me, ask me how my day was. She would even skip out on some lunches to sit with me in her classroom and talk instead of me sitting alone in the cafeteria. Around this time I was going through a very bad break up. The guy turned all of his friends against me and none of them would speak to me, even though they were my friends too. I didn’t do anything wrong and it was a manipulative situation that had me feeling constantly alone. Mrs. Monro would listen to me, be there for me, and give me her wisdom on what to do. She taught me to always be myself, never have fear, and stick up for what I believe in. Something I still follow to this day. She told me ” Rise above it all,” and I’ve been doing that ever since. She helped me feel comfortable going to school and not feeling timid. She was there when I had no one else in school. She showed nothing but care and compassion and that’s something I’ll never forget.
Their impact on me is what helped me become the person I am today. I always want to help people and make an impact on their lives just like Mrs. Monro and Mr. Lawlor did for me. I want to become a teacher and do exactly what they did for me to others.
I want to make a change, show kids they are far from alone. And they can do anything they want in this world. If I can make a difference and impact in at least one child’s life I would be happy. Having the opportunity to prevent someone from going through what I went through, with the drama and feeling alone in school, that’s my goal. To spread kindness and positivity.
I know this is final draft, but I’ll add a few general comments in case you want to revise a bit more. You’v got a clear focus here that fits with education theme: how these two teachers inspired you. Your writing is clear and well-organized throughout.
The main issue here is that most of this is that it isn’t fully developed. You’re writing in summary rather than scene—that is, we don’t really see what was happening in specific interactions. This is one of the big challenges of memoir, that the writer often doesn’t remember things clearly enough to write in scenes. Remember what we talked about in class, about how you may need to use your imagination as well as your memory in order to create some specific scenes. Look back at some of the sample essays and see how the writers keep us rooted in the moment of a particular experience (like the baseball essay about dealing with fear).
Another suggestion I’d make is to focus on just one of these teachers, probably the one who you remember most clearly and have the most to say about, or can more easily imagine.
I had a student a number of years ago who wrote abut an influential teacher—I’ll look for it when I get too a regular computer tomorrow instead of my iPad and post it for you to look at.