Lessons – New Leaf Parenting

I knew it was hopeless before the meeting even began.

Ms. Larrimore briskly explained to my perplexed mother that there was no amount of extra credit I could complete in the last few weeks of school to help me achieve a passing grade.

I had failed ninth grade English so badly, she told us, that I didn’t even need to attend the 7:10 A.M. class for the remainder of the year.

To her, I was hopeless.

I remember feeling a mixture of anger and relief.

Relief that I wouldn’t have to bother attending her class anymore and anger for the entire disaster that was my freshman year of high school.

Where had I gone so wrong?

Aside from second grade, I had attended private school. Ninth grade public exposed me to a world I was wholly unprepared for. I figured it out by fitting in with whoever would accept me- smoking cigarettes, smoking weed, drinking alcohol before and after school and failing the honors classes I had been assigned.

Ms. Larrimore, one of the first African- American students to graduate Maury High School in 1964, saw right through my privilege and wasn’t going to give an inch. This was a woman that assigned a few hundred word paper, in which we weren’t allowed to use the verb “to be”- is, was, am, going, will- all forms. She was all business and I was taking my education for granted.

I took a summer school class the following summer to make up that failed English class.

And ultimately, I became an English Major with a Masters in Education and later, a writer.

But the lessons Ms. Larrimore taught me that year will last a lifetime:

Action verbs illustrate.

Effort, not privilege, counts.

I entered an all-girls’ boarding school my sophomore year of high school.

My initial requirements to agree to attend were that it be co-ed without uniforms and yet I fell in love at-first-sight with an all-girls boarding school that required uniforms.

It changed my life.

Aside from my second grade year, I had attended private school throughout elementary and middle-school.

And then I entered my freshman year in public school.

Easy to predict, girl from small school gets swallowed by the wrong crowd- my grades, self-worth and confidence bottomed out. I went from an honors student to failing ninth grade English- the subject that would later become my college major and career.

I followed the popular crowd and resorted to stealing as a method of proving my bravery, a habit that eventually caught up with me at a local 7-11 convenience store. I used my privilege to avoid harsh punishments until I found haven at St. Timothy’s School.

The first day, I entered the “school store”, where you purchased your school supplies on the honor system- simply writing in a notebook on the cashier’s counter what you had taken.

As a thief, the system was abhorrent to me- how could they be so naive? But as I observed all that I could take without payment, I also envisioned a life I could lead with honesty.

I walked out of the store and started up the stairs, accidentally holding the pen I had used to write down my supplies. I stopped and wondered: it was an innocent enough mistake. Anyone could take a pen by accident. But then I realized why I was truly there- to change my life.

So I turned around and handed the pen to the “store lady” named “Dee” who looked me directly in the eyes and responded without hesitation, as if it had always been intended to be said to me, “Thank you, that is so honest of you.”

I was never the same.

That compliment of honorability would become the path I chose from thereon.

Verite Sans Peur.

Our school’s motto.

Truth Without Fear.

A motto I continue to live by in all aspects of my life, even when it is inconvenient.

So simple, and yet, so powerful.

If only we could all live our truths without fear.

Verite Sans Peur.