The summer before going into her First Grade year a kind little girl was both excited and scared. The previous year, she had gone to Sacred Heart for both Kindergarten and Pre- School with her now best friends. Then she moved to a different house ,and she would be forced to go to a new school. It was going to be different going from a small, private Catholic school in Norco to a large, Non Catholic public school in Destrehan. She didn't know who her teacher was or what to expect from this new upcoming school year.

The week before school, she got her placement letter. She was close to the moment of truth. She handed it to her mom, and the little girl gradually opened the paper to find out who her teacher was going to be. The little girl ended up having a teacher named Ms. O' Rourke. Surprisingly, she was a very good friend of her mom's. Happily jumping with joy, she then realized that she would have to ride the bus. Shaking, her nerves about her first bus ride began to come .

This little girl was I. On the first day of school I got up at the crack of dawn with my little backpack ready to go. It was like it was yesterday. I had little braided pig - tails in my hair with red ribbons on each side. I stood outside anxiously waiting. A yellow figure came down the road. The figure was the bus coming down the street. I was ready to “ defeat” this big yellow school bus. Motivated, I walked onto the bus and sat in the very front. Time passes and we were at school! It came time to get off of the bus at my new departure for about a year. This was like a new event in my life. Greatly overwhelmed by everything going on, I ecstatically got off the bus and was lost from there. First Grade was definitely a big step up from Kindergarten. The hallways were bigger than what I expected. We were all showed where the 1st Grade hallway was, and I got to see Ms. O'Rourke. I felt warmth and comfort once I entered the room. Many bright decorations were on the wall to bring a child into a story. An airbrushed figure of Dr. Seuss creation was on the wall that had a few assuring words of wisdom. My wonderful new teachers classroom expressed her personality. Ms. O'Rourke was an woman of average height with nicely teased blonde hair. She was very understanding and showed compassion towards each and every student.

Six months into school, we were required to write an essay to be assessed. A specific prompt given, and I was slow, but I stayed on topic. My favorite teacher, Ms. O'Rourke was walking around the class observing. She came by my desk and noticed that I hadn’t written a lot compared to the others. Ms . O'Rourke stood there telling me to “keep on writing” and didn’t leave until I had enough written down. She was acting as a mentor, telling me that I could do it .I was wondering why she was standing there bugging me the whole time. I listened to her and wrote until my hand was tired. I wrote and wrote and was pretty satisfied with what I had done. It was finally over.

It took the scores about a week to read and grade the writings. Each class got theirs and I was anxious to find out what my score was. Ms. O'Rourke handed out the papers and she smiled once she got to me. My thoughts were then incredibly scrambled at this point. I slowly flipped the paper over and saw that I had a “perfect score”. Ms. O'Rourke told me that I either had the best score in the class or one of the best in our grade. I was so excited and went home to tell my mom the great news.
The next day, a lady came to my class. This mysterious woman spoke to my teacher “wondering who the spectacular little girl that wrote the paper was.”She just so happened to be a grader of the essays. Ms. O’Rourke came over to me with a pleased visage on. She informed me that I was the girl the lady was spoke of. I was extremely surprised that she was talking about me. Ms. O'Rourke quickly hurried to tell my mom the even better news.
I thank Ms. O'Rourke for motivating me in the process of writing the paper. She had confidence in me and knew that I was capable of doing many things. That was one of my best years, and it set me up to become the person or writer that I am now. Till this day, I can still hear Ms. O'Rourke's nurturing voice saying ,“Ekuase, keep on writing,” in my head whenever I write.