#rememberreminder: Speak Up

I remember like it was yesterday: I’d be sitting in school, diligently doing the task at hand—practicing my letters or numbers, writing answers to questions in a workbook, or reading and taking notes—when all of a sudden, the teacher would ask a question. Around me, dozens of hands would raise, ready to provide an answer, and there I would sit.

Silent. Frozen. Unable to lift my own hand from my desk.

That feeling of dread became worse as I got older, when teachers found it more interesting to just randomly call out a student’s name instead of waiting for hands to raise. Don’t call on me, don’t call on me, don’t call on me would play on repeat in my head like a broken record as I tried to make myself smaller in my seat; in my mind, the more I shrunk, the easier it would be to become invisible.

As I child, I was a perfectionist in every sense of the word (admittedly, I still am), so my fear of saying something wrong prevented me from speaking up in school. I didn’t want anyone to think I wasn’t smart enough or good enough or that I wasn’t the perfect student that I so very badly wanted to be.

Because of this, during the 16 years I spent in a classroom, I probably raised my hand only a handful of times. I rarely let my voice be heard.

And funny, when you do something long enough,
it eventually becomes a habit.
Continue reading “Remember Reminder #11: Speak Up”