I was in 7th grade when it happened as I was in math class. I always stayed quiet by staying to myself, not really paying attention to the class, and not raising my hand or not even asking questions about anything. I had no questions to ask the teacher because I was always shy and nervous. I once looked up at the board and the question made me shiver. I decided to just wait out the whole class period because I knew I wasn’t going go to get up and ask the teacher for help. No one helped me the whole period because I was too nervous to ask. I already knew I would need help with this as I didn’t know when it would be the right time to ask my teachers for help. I kept asking my friends for help but they would never know most of the information they had for my questions. It took me about a month to finally consider asking my teacher for help.
This fear was extinguished by working harder as I paid more attention in class, listened to what the teacher was speaking to us about, focused on my work, and turned it in on time. I started speaking up to my teachers for help. In my head, I knew I was going to need help with this. I didn’t know when it would be the right time to ask my teachers for help. I kept asking my friends for help but they would never know most of the information. It took me about a month to finally consider asking my teacher for help. The teacher was done talking about the assignment we were about to start. It looked pretty tricky already and hard to complete. In my head, I was thinking like this is definitely the right time to ask at that moment. I breathed a sigh of relief and stood up to walk to my teacher’s desk. When I walked up to his desk I began asking questions.
The first question I asked my teacher was if he could help me with one of the questions on my assignment. I was very nervous as I started saying the words out of my own mouth. I didn’t know how he’d react to it but the teacher decided to be nice and kind. The teacher provided me with one of his own examples of the question I needed help with. The teacher even let me keep the example and I was so happy about it.
After the example, I started feeling calmer and more confident as my confidence soared. I asked him one more question about the assignment. The question was if he could provide me with some after-school tutoring. The teacher kindly said that I could and told me to meet him after class. The teacher put a smile on my face and I came after class ended.
I was tutoring with my math teacher and he began asking me questions. He asked me how my life was going and tried to get to know a little bit more about me. I even asked him some questions myself and how he could make me build up my self-esteem. It made me feel a lot more comfortable and he easily became my favorite teacher as he encouraged me a lot. After that day I would come to his class after the period ended every day.
So after a few days of going to his class every day I was finally able to feel more confident and less shy about asking for help from my teachers. The following week I was in his class again and needed help. It was a question that half the students knew. As soon as I saw the question I immediately got up and asked for help confidently for the first time in his class. I felt a lot motivated from the number of times he gave me feedback, I was able to feel like myself when I asked. My grades were so much better over the course of weeks I had left for the quarter. My grade in his class was an A and for the rest of my classes, I averaged around a B.
