Skip to content

Rikomatic

Musings on Dance, Food, Geek Stuff

Menu
  • Follow Me on Instagram
  • My Professional Site RangerRik.com
  • Yehoodi.com Archive
  • Every Roller Rink in California (Map)
Menu

Ms. Millar: The first person who thought I was smart

Posted on March 8, 2023March 8, 2023 by

Hey, it’s International Women’s Day! There are so many influential women who have nurtured and supported me over the years. Today I wanted to uplift my middle school math teacher Ms. Millar.

To be honest, I don’t remember much about Ms. Millar, other than she was a kind, sweet, older white lady that taught 6th grade math. But still, she had a huge impact on adolescent Riki. Because she was the first person who made me think that maybe I was smart.

Ms. Millar saw in me the potential to be more than the middling student that I was at the time. For some reason, Ms. Millar thought I could do better. So she recommended that I be transferred from the general math class to the advanced algebra class.

This was huge for me. I had never thought I was particularly good at math, or really anything. And this algebra class felt ten times harder than any other class I had ever had. The teacher was notorious for being a hard grader, happy to give out D’s and F’s, but also celebrating students for high achievement with a leaderboard at the front of the room.

I was scared out of my wits and worked harder than I ever had on anything.

Not only did Ms. Millar push me into this advanced class, she also kept tabs on me over the semester. So the first time I made the leaderboard, Ms. Millar tracked me down in the school hallway. “See, I told you, you belonged in that class!” she said, beaming.

So thanks Ms. Millar for believing in me more than I, or anyone else, believed in me. You made a big difference in my life.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

A History of the Jazz Split

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlfLr9YmMJU

Recent Posts

  • Thoughts on Learning and Skating
  • The Voice (poem)
  • Toy Train in a Tin
  • Bucket List Complete: Visiting All the Disney Theme Parks!
  • Highlights from 2025 Tokyo Trip

Categories

  • Books
  • Cats
  • Civil Society
  • Creative Writing
  • Dancing / Music
  • Education
  • Family
  • Film
  • Food and Drink
  • General
  • Health
  • Information Society
  • Machinima
  • Media Reform
  • Music
  • New York
  • Politics
  • quotation
  • Real World Places in SL
  • Science
  • SF Bay Area
  • Television
  • The Spirit
  • Travel
  • Uncategorized
  • United Nations
  • Virtual Worlds
  • Web/Tech

Tags

b-boy (76) breakdance (51) breaking (26) brooklyn (36) charleston (11) competition (11) dance (17) dancing (30) documentary (15) education (21) festival (12) frankie95 (16) frankie manning (52) frim fram (10) fundraiser (10) global kids (70) hip-hop (31) human rights (11) inaug09 (11) jazz (12) ken swift (10) lindy hop (144) lindyhop (23) lowcarb (18) lxd (11) macarthur foundation (12) machinima (22) memorial (14) mermaidparade (22) mtv (13) performance (16) poetry (11) popping (11) quaker (27) recipe (38) rockclimbing (16) second life (81) shim sham (15) skating (70) soul music (14) swing (52) swing dance (45) virtual world (19) virtual worlds (29) yehoodi (46)
© 2025 Rikomatic | Powered by Superbs Personal Blog theme