My biggest success story is Benjamin Crespin. On the first day of class, I told the freshman that half of them would fail my English 1 class because in middle school, they were used to showing up to a class and passing it. I told them that they had to do more than just breathe to pass my class; they actually had to do decent work! Unfortunately, Benjamin didn’t believe me and ended up failing the whole year.
When he saw that he had me for English 2, he was determined to get an A in my class! He didn’t tell me this until one week before the final. He had a B+ going into the final, and as I read his final, I determined that he had done well enough to earn that A-!
At the beginning of his junior year, he emailed me that he wanted to be my student aide. Unfortunately, I was going to be off that semester because I had chemotherapy and radiation, so I couldn’t teach. He decided to be the aide for the temporary teacher taking my place for a semester and to be my aide for the second semester. I asked him to make a short video explaining to the students about how he worked hard to go from failing freshman year to getting an A sophomore year so students could see they just needed to do decent work to pass the class.
At one point, I told him he was in a unique class of his own to be my student for three years. He responded that he wanted to be my aide his senior year and be my student for four years! Sadly, I told him that would not work out because I had to retire since it was too exhausting to teach and deal with cancer. However, I got to see him one more time before he graduated and went into the Marines!