Personal Essay

The seats were organized alphabetically, which normally wouldn’t have been a problem for me, but in this case, my sixth grade math teacher weaved my classmates and I up and down the room of desks, like columns. I landed in the front row, two seats down from the dusty projector and only a twitch of the eye away from his scrutinizing gaze.

Math was never my strong suite.

Short, old and unforgivingly blunt, Mr. Bean was adored by the rest of the class, and most of his former students. He’d been a staple at my middle school long before I arrived and was now just on the cusp of retirement. Even before school started, I was terrified of him. Stories about his class and the way I saw him strut around school, only about a foot and a half taller than us, made him out to be a teacher that took no nonsense and didn’t care how his students saw him.

 While my fellow classmates received nicknames like “Paintbrush” and “Sasquatch” for characteristics like hair and height, I tried my best to remain under the radar. After going over homework each class he would return to his desk, open his grade book, full of red marks and notes and begin to call out names.

“Brook Alenwick!”

“Two,” she answered, placing her pencil down beside her notebook. Even from my seat in the front, I could see how neat her homework was.

One by one my classmates responded with similar numbers—one, two, sometimes zero.

“Nickolas Lee!”

“Seven,” he replied, with a proud chuckle.

The class laughed, hard and loud, at his obvious stupidity while Mr. Bean made a mark into his grade book. Usually he made a comment, but instead he moved on to the next name.

“Samantha Perry!”

“Two,” I lied.

I wasn’t proud of my mistakes. I’d given up on getting the right answers early on in the class, instead watching intently as Mr. Been went over the more difficult questions, tracking my path to failure each time. In the beginning, it was easy enough to lie, to simply spit out what my classmates were saying so I wouldn’t become the next target for the class’s pent up laughter. Eventually, my test scores prompted Mr. Bean to come up with a new way of monitoring my progress.

“Andrew Zinc!”

“One.”

With the last name called and marked down in the book, Mr. Bean looked up, narrowing his eyes and pointing a stout finger at me before curling it back. Bringing my homework, void of the notes and doodles that were so often featured in the margins and free space, I trudged up to his desk, feeling the eye of every student on me. After handing over the notebook, Mr. Bean went through each question, marring the page with red slashes and x’s.

It was everything that I feared would happen to me while in his class. Not only had I failed to stay under the radar, I was the one my friends snickered at. I was the one that made the class laugh, so hard and loud, when I called out my number.

This class effectively stomped out my voice. Unlike Nick Lee, I wasn’t proud of myself or the way in which I could make the class laugh. I faded into myself to keep from being embarrassed, humiliated in front of the people that made up my whole world. This class instilled in me a fear, so deep that I struggle to this day, of answering questions and speaking up in class.

Over the years, the experiences with the good teachers have overpowered the memories of Mr. Bean. I have learned that my input is valued, even while I struggle to become comfortably enough to speak.