My "Ms.G"

My “Ms.G”

So my adolescents was not completely happy.I didn’t know I could choose happy/turbulent.My senior year in high school my parents began a lengthy divorce as my grandparents started to die. After my graduation from Andover one teacher approached me and told me that teachers knew I was having problems but they didn’t think it was their place to offer assistance. This has made me look with disdain on my alma mater where it was like going to school amongst the tombstones. Not one teacher at this “prestigious” school would help.I went to UNH part time and did horribly.
After working full time for several years I decided to go back to school and chose Lynn University in Florida.There I was fortunate to have a caring teacher named Dr. Sam Feinman who instructed me in Anatomy and Physiology and Microbiology/Pathology. “A good teacher inspires and a good student continues to study “ he used to like to say in the classroom as he talked about his wife and Beagles.
So there I was stuck in a classroom in south Florida with five other students and Dr.Feinman, a retired physician who stood by his students in the classroom and on his free time. He made me believe I could be a better student and advised me to become a doctor-I don’t like the smell of decay or the sight of guts. He was able to reach inside of me and pull out my confidence to resurrect my career as a student and here I am halfway to my master’s. Doc walked with me. He had me over for dinner with his wife. When I needed help he was there ready to go the extra yard. But more so he believed in me when all those Andover faculty members took care of themselves and their own worlds.
I never thought I’d meet such a treasure at a school not many have heard of when I packed my 77 Riviera and drove to Fla.

We are not all fortunate to have a Ms.G come along and I never thought I would, especially so far away. I believe every high school in America should teach a Freedom Writer’s course. I know it would have helped greatly at Andover where everything is supposed to be so perfect. The problems they went through helped me forget about my own. Their writing inspired heroes to travel to see them. In these heroes they saw the plights of their own lives. I think this will be a keeper on many shelves for a long time. I enjoyed the book more as the movie seemed brief and cut out a lot of the stories. Ms.G offered the students a positive release to express what they were going through and for that they are better people and better equipped to face the world.
I have faced homelessness twice in my life and I know what it’s like for no one to care. That’s when I invoke the words of Dr. Feinman , God rest his soul, to help me carry through.
I did enjoy the humor when the student said, for example, “Juliet’s parents found her dead next to her boyfriend. Unfortunately, my parents found me alive next to my boyfriend.”

Students surely need more Ms.G’s in life who are willing to stand up for the students and help them believe that they can overcome and succeed. This book and movie will have a place in classrooms and libraries, hopefully, for a long time.