A/N I wrote this for speech class, prompt was, "My Greatest Inspiration."

When I introduced myself the first day and mentioned the school I graduated from, Toni reacted with a, "I hate that school!" To tell the truth, I loved it, most say that elementary school gives them their happiest memories, high school is full of embarrassment and heartbreak, but I guess it's the opposite for me.

I was 13 or so, at a new school, I hated the frumpy uniforms, the old rundown building, and the absent playground. I hated the new faces everywhere, the boiling gym, and the cramped cafeteria, but most of all I hated being alone.

I had just graduated from the elementary school across the street, and none of my friends were going to Rylie, later named A+ Academy. They herded all the new students to a separate room for testing where it would decide our class level: with the snotty Honors kids, the average kids, or the 'step-up' bunch. I was depressed, sure I always passed those huge state tests like TAKS and TAAS but I never paid attention in class and got dismal grades. When I finally got my schedule I was stuck with the smarty, Honors kids, did they make a mistake!? But in my first class they called, "Smith, Susan!" so I guessed I was in the right place.

It wasn't until English class, that I first realized I loved being in the smarty classes. I never loved reading before; I didn't care for English classes. I never noticed that I slowly loved English class with Mr. Rilling, and when we read 'The Hobbit', I found how amazing reading was, how you could be transported to another world without so much as a 'Beam me up, Scotty!'. I can tell you now a huge part of what makes me want to be an English teacher was that class. Mr. Rilling never gave up on teaching us all culture and literature, once while reading 'Romeo and Juliet', he decided out of nowhere to teach us court dancing. Just imagine a bunch of awkward 8th graders, trying to dance like it's the 15th century, then we "proudly" were volunteered to dance in front of the whole school in a pep rally. This "great fun" as Mr. Rilling called it, solidified our understanding of Shakespeare's time, they didn't just say strange words back then, they also danced weird too. Mr. Rilling would do these things a lot, when we read 'The Hobbit', we also read the author's biography, and we saw Lord of the Rings as a class a few years later with much puppy-dog eyes and whining. When we read 'The Little Prince' we had to make a papier-mâché model of the little prince's planet. He also never acted like we were teens or children, but smart adults who didn't need someone to hold their hand through class, who just wanted respect. This type of engaged teaching is exactly why, when I talk to my former classmates now, they remember English as the best class they had, where they learned the most.

A+ Academy itself was somewhere I grew with no notions of cool or dorky. There was a goth cheerleader at my school, a band geek who was the quarterback, a rocker who played forward in basketball, and the most popular girl in my year was also in Honors with me. For some reason the cliques that formed at A+ were loose, people came and went. I usually sat with many different types of people, band members, cheerleaders, jocks, rockers, and dancers. In fact the class president senior year wasn't a popular bubbly person who wouldn't do anything with the position, it went to one of my best friends who everyone knew cared about politics and committees, the person that in a normal schools, never would have won. I want this for the classes I teach, no cliques, no students sitting alone with no friends. I want them to support each other, give each other encouragement, and forget the high school clichés and angst, as we all did at A+.

A+ also had small classes, I was number 4 in my graduating class, but that is out of 40. There were even less students in Honors. At the beginning of 7th and 8th grade there were maybe 20 kids in my grade, in Honors, but in the last year of high school, there were 5 of us, me, the reader, Angel, the class president, Grace, the valedictorian, Chad, the band geek, and Griselda, the basketball star. We were all friends, even though we were socially, economically, culturally, so very different, truthfully because we'd either be friends for 8 hours of the day 5 days a week or we'd go out of our minds around each other.

In ending I guess I should address what all this has to do with the speech topic, my greatest inspiration. If I never went to A+ Academy, never had teachers like Mr. Rilling, I wouldn't be me, a future English teacher, who wants to show how great and beautiful literature and writing can be. A+ has taught me how classes can be personal and informal, as well as be aloof and proper. I've heard Shakespeare created thousands of words alone, if he had taught a class of 20, wouldn't that be 20,000? The power of teaching, to me is more than the saying, "Those who can't teach", it's about that moment that you are teaching and the kid says, "I get it!", or has that eager look, like they want to know more. I'm not naive, I know not every kid will want to learn or care, but I'll try with every kid to get them to love literature.