In elementary, I discovered my natural talents. I was really artistic in my mentor, Mrs. Choate’s, eyes because she realized that I was able to write some very interesting stories and draw some remarkable pictures, as well.

When Mrs. Choate tutored me after school, she would have me write many stories. However, before I wrote most of those stories she would show me an easier way to brainstorm each of them because my ideas never came to me that quickly and I always struggled with that.

So, to help me brainstorm, Mrs. Choate would always draw a spider web to help give me a better, visual perspective by putting all my ideas in different bubbles all around my big idea that was in the middle. The spider web example was really helpful and I still use it to this day.

I am thankful for Mrs. Choate because she was a remarkable tutor! She helped me learn how to write more neatly and she always kept me busy by giving me different books to read. Mrs. Choate was an important, positive influence that I had during my childhood and I still consider her as an important person that I have in my life!

She saw great things in me, she thought I was creative, and she didn’t want my talent to go to waste. Mrs. Choate has been one of my biggest inspirations because she always believed in me.

As the great Helen Keller once said, “It was my teacher’s genius, her quick sympathy, her loving tact which made the first years of my education so beautiful. It was because she seized the right moment to impart knowledge that made it so pleasant and acceptable to me.

She realized that a child’s mind is like a shallow brook which ripples and dances merrily over the stony course of its education and reflects here a flower, there a bush, yonder a fleecy cloud; and she attempted to guide my mind on its way, knowing that like a brook it should be fed by mountain streams and hidden springs, until it broadened

out into a deep river, capable of reflecting in its placid surface, billowy hills, the luminous shadows of trees and the blue heavens, as well as the sweet face of a little flower…

My teacher is so near to me that I scarcely think of myself apart from her. How much of my delight in all beautiful things is innate, and how much is due to her influence, I can never tell.

I feel that her being is inseparable from my own and that the footsteps of my life are in hers. All the best of me belongs to her—there is not a talent, or an aspiration or a joy in me that has not awakened by her loving touch.”