One afternoon, my 15-year-old son came home devastated after failing a math test. His classmates had laughed at him, and he was convinced he was just \u201cbad at math.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s when I told him about something that happened to me in high school.<\/p>\n
My algebra teacher, Mrs. Keller, spent an entire year mocking me in front of the class. Every question I asked came with a sarcastic remark about how I \u201cwasn\u2019t very bright.\u201d Eventually, I stopped raising my hand at all.<\/p>\n
Then one day she tried to humiliate me again. When I asked a question, she handed me a flyer for the district math championship and sarcastically suggested I represent the school.<\/p>\n
The class burst out laughing.<\/p>\n
But instead of backing down, I accepted the challenge.<\/p>\n
For the next two weeks, my dad sat with me at the kitchen table every night. He patiently explained every problem until I understood it. Slowly, math stopped looking impossible.<\/p>\n
On the day of the competition, I solved problem after problem \u2014 until I won.<\/p>\n
When they handed me the microphone, I thanked my father first. Then I thanked Mrs. Keller.<\/p>\n
Because every time she laughed at me, it gave me another reason to prove her wrong.<\/p>\n
Years later, I shared that story with my son.<\/p>\n
Three months later, he ran into the house waving his report card.<\/p>\n
He got an A in math.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One afternoon, my 15-year-old son came home devastated after failing a math test. His classmates had laughed at him, and he was convinced he was just \u201cbad at math.\u201d That\u2019s when I told him about something that happened to me in high school. My algebra teacher, Mrs. Keller, spent an entire year mocking me in …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4880,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4879","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4879","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4879"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4879\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4881,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4879\/revisions\/4881"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4880"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}