Be Excellent

 

In honor of National Teacher’s Day, which is tomorrow, I want to share a story about Ms. Rousseau, my 4^th grade teacher and the only Black educator I had in elementary school. Due to my early prowess in math, I was routinely pulled from my grade and promoted to math class with older kids. I was also incredibly shy and awkward, so this special treatment often made me feel uncomfortable. This was compounded by the teasing I received (albeit quite harmless) from my friends my age as well as from the older kids who were amused to find a tiny Asian kid in their midst. 

Ms. Rousseau must have perceived my discomfort, because at the first parent-teacher conference with my mom, and with me present, she took the time to both praise me for my smarts, acknowledge that it had caused me some social anxiety, and assure me that it was a good thing that I was excelling and being put in a place where I could excel further. The fact that I can remember this conversation some 40+ years later, and am feeling emotional about it, tells you how powerful Ms. Rousseau’s empathy was for my sense of self. Teachers can impact our entire lives! 

But it wasn’t just Ms Rousseau’s empathy that positively affected me. It was also the permission she gave me to be excellent, and to be unapologetic about being excellent. As kids, and even and perhaps especially as parents, pressure to fit in is immense. Being singled out, being away from my friends, being thrown in with kids older than me was all horrifying for my 4^th grade self. I quickly learned that even something positive – being smart – was something to downplay or actively sabotage if it meant avoiding situations where I could be vulnerable to teasing. 

And, just as quickly but more powerfully, Ms. Rousseau’s words allowed me to own my excellence and not be cowed by internal or external pressures to diminish or hide it. To this day, this remains a powerful lesson for myself and for others around me, which is to be as excellent as possible and value that more than any swirling winds around us that threaten to topple us. It's what I want for myself, and it's what I exhort others to do as well.

To borrow from another post of mine, excellence is inherently isolating, so we must be comfortable with accepting that being excellent comes with costs that are not easy to bear. But there is something overwhelming better, for ourselves and for the world around us, when we allow ourselves to be as excellent as possible, to push ourselves further than our comfort-seeking selves may allow. My fourth-grade self first learned this lesson, and to this day I strive to live that lesson out as best as I can.