A Teacher Forgotten
Seventh-grade me was a nuisance. Between knocking down bathroom doors and starting wrestling fights in the hallway, I had earned the reputation among teachers of being a disciplinary nightmare. Not to mention how blissfully I ignored all my academic responsibilities. I famously lived by the phrase, “What’s wrong with being below average?” which gave me the confidence to neglect all my classes. School, in my eyes, was nothing more than an inconvenient detour between rugby practice and endless hours of Fortnite.
Mr. Russell Buxton was my English teacher during this eventful 7th grade. He was British, speaking with a refined eloquence, a true academic. Notorious for his passionate lectures and harsh standards, he was the kind of teacher whose class students dreaded. I had prepared myself, convinced we would butt heads. But there was something different about Mr. Buxton. No matter how persistently I tried to challenge him and disrupt his lessons, he remained unshaken—too composed, too charismatic, too cool-headed to be rattled by my provocations.
Mr Buxton held a tournament in all of his classes, the War of Words where every student had to pick a poem to recite in front of the class head to head against another student. I approached this assignment as I did all the others, trying my hardest to cut corners. My original plan was a recitation of a poem about the intricate wonders of Fortnite Battle Royale. The day before my performance though, Mr. Buxton pulled me aside. With quiet certainty, he asked, "Why would you allow yourself to give anything less than your best?"
He spoke of a tradition in his class: letters to our graduating 12th-grade selves. Soon, he explained, I would write to the person I hoped to become by twelfth grade. Then he posed a question that lingered far beyond that conversation: What would I want to say to my future self? Who did I hope I would have become?
At the time, I didn’t think much of myself. I was more than content being the backbencher, the student who skated by unnoticed. I thought that was the only destiny I was capable of. Mr. Buxton saw something more. He told me he believed in me—that he saw me as someone with potential, someone capable of more than I allowed myself to be. “But it starts here”, he said. It starts with refusing to accept anything less than your best.
That night, instead of going home and ignoring my responsibilities, I stayed up late with a flashlight and my poem in bed, anxiously practicing. I came to school the next day excited to present my poem. I stood up on the podium in front of the whole class and proudly presented my poem: waving my hands. enunciating every syllable, projecting my voice. After my performance, the class clapped, as shocked as I was by the effort I had given. It was a rewarding feeling, to see the time I had given preparing being recognized. It made me feel proud, worthy, capable, a feeling that a little lost 7th grader deeply cherished, and it all started with Mr Buxton having faith in me and just asking me to try.
Five years later I am a senior who is getting ready to close a large chapter of his life. It might be cliché to say but it really is true. No more dinners every night with Mom and Dad, no more Saturday morning training with my friends, no more 6 am bus rides scrambling to finish my calculus homework. I like to think it has culminated in a pretty successful outcome—I made the right decisions, surrounded myself with the right people, and found my way.
As I prepare to walk across the graduation stage, I hear voices of praise crediting me as a finished product, the kid who turned his life around after almost failing 4th grade. But the part they don’t see, the part I nearly forgot is that it all began with a quiet challenge from a forgotten teacher.
I’m not being melodramatic when I say that I credit Mr. Buxton with all my success over the last four years. His simple act of sitting me down and having faith instilled in me the drive to strive for excellence, which I live by today. It might have started in English class, but it has developed into a life lesson that my parents, coaches, and friends have all noted.
Behind every success story, every billion-dollar company, and every recording-breaking athlete, there are the silent supporters who are forgotten. They are the quiet motivators who request no recognition. These people are equally responsible for the victories, yet their names are never seen next to the trophies. Their impact is integral to the success stories, yet they remain forgotten.
Mr Buxton is the man who made my success story possible, who enabled my turnaround. But as I prepare to step onto the graduation stage, receiving praise for defying expectations, I realize that he is forgotten. He will not sit at graduation nor will his name be on the diploma. However, while Mr Buxton’s impact may go unseen by the rest of the world, it will never be by me. Long after the dust settles, when the accolades fade, the lessons he taught me, the belief he instilled in me, will guide me through whichever chapter of my life comes next.