Paper #2, the draft

When I started school I was a daydreamer, it earned me several demerits on my grade reports. My parents had to talk to me several times about it. By 3^rd grade I was pulling out a book the moment I finished my work, to be fair I would occasionally read first and complete the homework later. If I was not interested by the topic I tuned out. I preferred to immerse myself other worlds, Harry Potter, Redwall and many more. My teachers scolded but as I showed that my work would be completed they allowed me to read, they preferred that occupation to that of a troublemaker.  As I entered middle school I was still a voracious reader, I devoured books by the day and I dreaded my classes. The sound of the bell meant I would have to close my book and learn about someone who died 100 years ago without a story to leave behind or a complicated math problem that left me with jackhammers attacking my skull. Despite those horrors it was in middle school that I first learned the value of a good teacher. A good teacher is one who inspires their students to love learning, and encourages them not to hide themselves away while their counterpart is one who teaches simply because it is a job, someone who does not have a passion for their subject.

The best example of a teacher who inspired me was Mr. Davis, my creative writing teacher from North Kitsap High School. Walking into the classroom I immediately decided that it had character. I sat at an old fashioned chair that swooped up to connect to a tan surface pockmarked with scratches and scribbles of verse. The walls were covered with posters featuring the immortal personalities of cinema. Sherlock Holmes was analyzing the members of “Spinal Tap” on the opposite wall while “The Hobbit” stepped out his front door on another. I felt comfortable there, a feeling that was solidified by my new teacher. Mr. Davis immediately sent out this aura of eccentric intelligence. That first week he learned our names and we dived into a world of writing. His prompts ranged from the subject of our least favorite class to the meaning of the color yellow. While the rapid plunge into writing was a little unnerving, the first reading of our work in class was nail biting, he always encouraged us to write without fear. He honestly cared about all of his students. He wanted to know what our writing styles were, and he understood that what we wrote came from a place that most of us wanted to keep hidden. Because of that we had pseudonyms to use whenever we submitted assignments. The project of the week would be stapled into a packet and then read out loud. The pseudonyms gave us anonymity, safety to write and receive comments, without embarrassment. The safety was one of the tools he used to draw us out of our shells and tell the truth in our writing.