The teacher who taught him to trust himself.
My oldest son has always been smart.
But being smart and believing in yourself are two very different things.
My son has always been the kid who questions himself. He can know the answer. He can do the work. He can do it incredibly well and still look to someone else for reassurance that he got it right.
Then, in seventh grade, he had Mrs. Allison Moore for ELA.
He would constantly ask her to check his work.
Is this right?
Is this good?
Did I do this correctly?
He wanted reassurance.
And Mrs. Moore could have simply given it to him.
Instead, she gave him something much more valuable.
She taught him to own his confidence.
She pushed him to trust his work. To recognize when he knew what he was doing. To stop needing someone else to confirm that he was capable and begin learning to see it for himself.
That may sound like a small thing.
As his mom, I can tell you it wasn't.
Confidence has never come easily to him. He works incredibly hard. He pushes himself. And even when he's doing well, he's often the first person to question whether he's doing well enough.
Mrs. Moore saw that in him.
And instead of becoming another person he could depend on for reassurance, she taught him how to begin giving that reassurance to himself.
Today, my son is an incredibly strong ELA student.
And as his mom, I attribute so much of that to Mrs. Moore.
Not simply because she taught him English.
Because she helped him see what he could do.
There are teachers who teach children how to write, analyze, and communicate.
And then there are teachers who help children discover their own voice.
Mrs. Moore did both.
Years later, my son may still question himself sometimes. That's part of who he is.
But he also carries something with him that Mrs. Moore helped plant in seventh grade:
The confidence to trust himself.
Mrs. Moore is one of Our Sharks.
And I'll always be grateful that she saw something in my son—and then taught him how to see it, too.
No One Swims Alone.
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