I’m going to tell you about someone who helped me grow, someone who taught me everything from math to being a better person. She was a big role model for me and I will never forget her. Her name was Mrs. J and she was my sixth grade teacher.


Mrs. J was the best teacher I ever had. She helped 13 kids from my class get published in the Young Writers of America contest and not to mention treated us like her own children. Mrs. J was everything you could ask for, funny, talkative, entertaining, outgoing, homework hating (no lie here), and not strict at all. She was amazing.



I remember the first day of school perfectly. There were twenty-five of us sitting in a classroom while a new teacher Mrs. J introduced herself. In all honesty we were expecting the worse. We have a lot of strict teachers here at my school and we were hoping we wouldn’t get another one. And luckily we didn’t, in fact we got the complete opposite.



Just on the first day she told us that the health rule didn’t apply to our room. She brought in skittles and a thing called the gag bag where you could pull out candy from whenever you did anything good. And get this, she’s diabetic. But that didn’t stop her from bringing in and eating sweets all the time.



On the first day of school Mrs. J said we would be doing a lot of poetry in our room. I groaned to myself when she said this. My sister wrote poetry all the time and I never seemed to be able to do it. A whole year of it would be simply unbearable. We read poems by a lot of famous authors like Robert Frost, Edgar Allen Poe, and lots of other people too. As the year went on I seemed to like it more and more. We had a poetry read at an old folk’s home and it was a lot of fun. I was one of the only kids in the class that read an octave that rhymed and everyone told me it was really good. At that point I had come to love poetry and got it posted online many times.



One day Mrs. J told us that we would all submit our poetry to the Young Writer’s of America contest to try to win two-hundred-fifty dollars for our class. She told us if we won we would throw a huge party and that’s how we would use the money. That’s right, why by new books when you could throw a party? Also if yours was good enough you could get it published in a book. Mrs. J told us we had to write about family and I had that in my mind when I brought it home.



It had never taken me so long to write a poem in my life. I ended up taking out a dictionary and going from there. I took a horrible poem to school that no amount of editing could help. As people around me were revising their poems, I was typing mine. I turned mine if with little confidence of getting published.



A couple months later as I was shoving my books into my desk Mrs. J told us she had big news. I thought up immediately that she had gotten her own book published that she had been telling us about for the whole year. I was happy for her and couldn’t wait until she shared. As I sat down and started on working for first fifteen Mrs. J got our attention and told us that thirteen kids from our class had been chosen to be published in the Young Writer’s of America book. My stomach twisted up and I got the worse butterflies I ever had in my life. I immediately forced my mind to think of the worse, that I didn’t get published so I wouldn’t be disappointed when my name didn’t get called.


Mrs. J went through the names proudly as she handed out the vibrant yellow envelopes to the winners. I was happy when my best friends name got called, at least one of us would win. I looked down at my desk and waited for the uncomfortable moment to be over. Suddenly I heard my name to be called and I looked up to see everyone staring at me. I slowly got to my feet and made my way over to my teacher. She smiled at me and I smiled back. It was one of the happiest moments I have ever had.



Mrs. J helped me go from hating poetry with all my mind, body, and soul to loving it and getting a poem published in a book with thirteen of my classmates. Mrs. J told us that she thought of us as her children and as the year went on she was like a second mother. She cared for us more then any other teacher in the world would and made sure we had fun every moment of the day. As the year is coming to a close and Mrs. J isn’t coming back to teach at the school for I realize how much she had done for us and how much she didn’t have to do. Mrs. J took us out once a month for a Service Saturday where we could help out the community. She pushed us to do our best and many of us became better at many things, like I became better at writing poetry. We all grew during the year as individuals and we did it because of Mrs. J. She let us be ourselves instead of having us be forced to be completely polite and quiet like any other teacher at my school would. There was no other teacher like her in the whole school if not the whole City of Redmond. She was the best and we were all lucky to have her.


year comes to a close
realize how different it will be without you
when you’re gone I won’t have another teacher like you
never have a teacher I can give my poems to
one that will care as much as you do
never again a teacher who gave so much support
one who I could call a friend
one who was so concerned about her students
one that I could call my favorite teacher
you’re just too hard to beat
I guess I’m trying to say
I’ll miss you
I’ll never forget you


And I never will forget Mrs. J. When my kids ask me who my favorite teacher was growing up it will be Mrs. J because no one will ever be able to beat her. Mrs. J was the best teacher ever and that’s an understatement. When she got in trouble for bringing in treats every day for us she got around it and brought in healthy food that still tasted good. She told us a true story about her childhood at least once a week and even shared her grandmother stories which were really important to her. I’ll miss Mrs. J when I’m in Junior High but I guess life has to move on. But I know one thing for sure, when I look back on my childhood, Mrs. J will come right to mind since she made me have the most fun I’ve ever had in school and that’s a real accomplishment.