Michael Angelo

When I was in the second grade, I was not a “good” kid. I was falling behind in math, reading — in all subjects, really. I acted out. And at home… let’s just say there wasn’t much support or structure to help me.

One day on the playground, my best friend and I spotted a teacher walking across the yard and saw something shocking about her. She had unshaven legs.

We both burst out laughing. In our second-grade world in the 90s, this was shocking, strange, and hilarious, I suppose.

She noticed us, approached, and asked, “What’s so funny?”

With the open sincerity of a child, we told her the truth, which promptly earned us both detentions. It dawned on me then that I had made an enemy for life.

Roughly two years later, I found out who my fifth-grade homeroom teacher would be: Ms. Whorton, the same woman I had made fun of at the playground. Dread washed over me.

No thanks to my learning disability, I was still awfully behind the rest of my classmates and had to be placed in the “Resource” program. A class apart from the others in my grade for kids who needed extra reading and math help. It was basically one step above special ed. I hated it. It made me feel different. Disconnected.

With Ms. Whorton as my homeroom teacher, I knew I faced yet another setback and would be stuck in this humiliating position as the “Resource” kid.

Ms. Whorton, however, didn’t hold a grudge; she did not see me as a bad kid or a failure. She found out I loved film and performance. So she got me involved in acting, improv, and poetry. All of a sudden, school was a place I felt alive in again. With Ms. Whorton’s help, encouragement, and belief, I was able to test out of the Resource program at the end of the year and rejoined my classmates full-time.

My grades went up, and thanks to her, I was accepted into a performing arts magnet school.

She decided to see the potential in me when no one else did and changed my life.