High school is a scary place to a middle school student. High school students are so much older, so much cooler, and way more mature, and there are so many people! This was amplified for me because at my middle school I had an eighth grade graduating class of 35 and I would be in a graduating class of over 500 students in high school.
Teachers were my first impression of high school. I was in classes with really nice teachers, ones who cared about the students and their job. But one teacher stood out above the rest: my honors English teacher Mrs. Johansen. She not only was a joyous teacher, but she also made us all feel welcome and comfortable.
I had not met an new friends, and I was not planning on it, but she helped me feel comfortable enough to talk to the kids in my class. Every day when I would walk in, I would say hello to her and there would be other students there as well and we would all talk together.
For one of the first assignments, I had to make a creation story, and I had one or two friends in the class, so we paired up. We thought it would be hilarious if we colored in my face in the likeness to something we saw in the movie Insidious. I painted myself as the demon thing with a red and black face that we called Darth Maul baby, and we incorporated that into the story. She laughed when she saw me walk in with the marker on my face, but it did not come across as mean. Through this we learned different ways to present about a topic we had never thought of before. We learned about different ways people have explained creation and how to convey that both in written and verbal and theatrical stories.
Throughout the year, she managed to turn what would have been a nerve-wracking experience into something I actually enjoyed. Even when the class got switched around student-wise at the end of the semester, she helped us to feel comfortable being ourselves around each other. During second semester, our presentations became better because we were more comfortable being ourselves in front of the class. Several groups did raps or dressed up weird in front of everyone to dramaticize their performances.This ended up seeping into other classes as well, I became more comfortable answering the teachers questions in each class and doing work in class or out of class with people I barely knew. High school stopped being such a scary place and it turned out to be more fun than I could have imagined.