It was another normal day for me in second grade, when suddenly the teacher told us to write a one page response to a movie we had watched on Halloween. I started to think about the movie and what I had actually enjoyed from it, the main thing that popped out to me and the first thing that popped into my mind, were skeletons. The question about the movie was extremely simple and straightforward, “what did you like about the movie?”At first like always it took me a long time to start writing. 

I always struggled and still do to this day, trying to figure out the right way to start a writing assignment. I find it almost impossible to get more than 3 words down in under 30 minutes, as I try to come up with the perfect way to start my story/writing. Thirty minutes passed and the teacher walked by my desk, “what is going on here?” Most students were about half way done with their writing, but here I was with just my name and date on the paper. I explained to the teacher that I had absolutely no idea on how to start my response to the question. “ Do I start it with a question or just a normal sentence?” I asked her as I looked up, ready to hear the answer that I believed would answer all my questions but, instead, she told me to “just write and don’t think about what you’re writing, but stay on topic”. She walked away as I was about to ask her to explain what she meant, I was too embarrassed to go up to her as I was already behind the entire class and didn’t want to “bother” her again. I was once again left extremely confused and I let another twenty minutes pass by. 

All the other students started to exchange papers to start reviewing each other’s writing. I finally chose to go up to the teacher and try to receive some advice that might actually be beneficial to me. I told her that I didn’t understand what she meant earlier and that I still needed her help. To my surprise she wasn’t upset or angry with me, for not completing my writing assignment, but instead actually looked happy. She told me to sit down with a smile on her face and asked me exactly what I was struggling with. I explained to her that I wasn’t sure how to start my writing and had no idea how to write about the skeletons from the movie. She told me to ask myself a question and that was “what did you like about the movie?”, it was the same exact question she asked the class earlier. This time she told me to ask myself the question and so I did, to my surprise my mind started to get flooded with ideas and questions about skeletons. I was confident I was going to write about skeletons and how they looked and acted in the movie.

 Unsure of how to start my writing and what would be my first sentence, I asked the teacher “What should my first sentence be?”,  She told me to just “forget about the first sentence” and to start writing everything that was in my head about the skeletons and what I liked about them. I went back to my desk and did exactly that. 

I started to write about the skeletons and finally got my first few words down on paper, for some reason I loved this feeling, not having to stress about an introduction or first sentence. I continued to write when I finally reached about half way on the first page in just about five minutes. This allowed me to figure out what my first sentence and introduction were going to be. I grabbed another page and began to write everything down. Not paying attention to how far down the page or how long I had been writing for, my introduction ended up filling up the entire page. This time the teacher walked by my desk and saw everything I had written in under twenty minutes. She was flabbergasted, and I apologized for writing too much. 

Smiling at me, she explained that I did not need to apologize. I never felt more free in my life, I could write exactly anything and everything down so I continued to write and finish my second page. I still had more ideas and ways of continuing my response to such a simple question, I grabbed a third page which very quickly turned into a forth, fifth, sixth, seventh, and finally an eighth page.

Over the course of an hour, I was able to write an eight page response to a question that I couldn’t even process in the beginning of class. I walked up to the teacher’s desk prouder than ever before and handed her my pages as she looked at me completely speechless. She couldn’t believe that her simple advice led me from absolutely nothing to eight pages. After that day my writing had changed completely, going forward into the third, forth, fifth, and sixth grade. I had to start writing two to three page responses and essays to simple questions, always getting stuck on the first sentence. I remembered my teacher’s advice and  jumped straight into the body of my essays. I had a tendency to come back and finish writing my introductions. I simply would just start to write down exactly what was in my mind about the topic, not worrying about spelling or complete sentences. I would later go back to fix and remove certain things that did not make sense and it met criteria. This is where I really started to notice how much I could write. I have been able to write twelve page papers with little to no effort, thanks to my second grade teacher. Something so insignificant to others was actually truly life changing to me.