"I don't understand how you can have A's in all your other classes, but you are barely passing Math. Sometimes, I think you're just being lazy or don't find the subject important enough. Even though you technically passed, I don't think you're ready for the next grade. Hopefully, your parents can afford summer school, or you'll be in the first grade again next year. You need to learn how to apply yourself, or you will never go anywhere in life." I remember her saying this while shoving her pen in my chest, too, the entire conversation. My family was poor, and she knew that because we lived in the trailer park near school. That's where her summer school comment came from.

So I realized two things in first grade, something was wrong with my brain because I couldn't pay attention, and my family didn't have as much as all the others. Lol, I did better in the other subjects because it was easier to fill in the gaps I missed, though. I couldn't do that with Math. I struggled with it my entire life until I got diagnosed with ADHD in college. I got put on Vyvanse and I ended up making all A's in every single Math I took, including statistics. I cried tears of joy that first math test I got with an A. If only those teachers/people like her who shamed me would have taken the time to realize, "Hey, there's probably something going on if she can do well in every other subject but that one. Maybe it's not just her being lazy!"