You Saw Me

I was fifteen when I decided it was time—time to take my learning seriously. Not in the way school usually defined it, but in my own way.

I had already learned that I didn’t thrive in traditional classrooms. I’m a visual learner. Spoken words dissolve into fog; lectures become a blur. I don’t absorb information by listening—I discover it by doing. Quietly. Systematically. Alone.

What I needed was a structure I could move within, not one that I need to fit. I didn’t need someone to talk at me—I needed space to teach myself.

And so I took it.

I sat at the front of my senior mathematics class—not to better hear the teacher, but to place myself in plain view, teaching myself the syllabus. I was always ahead. Always working differently. I didn’t ask permission. I didn’t apologise. I simply started learning on my own terms.

And the teacher? She let me.

She didn’t pull me back into the group. She saw what I was doing—and chose not to interfere. She recognised something in me, and gave it space.

That moment was foundational. For the first time, I discovered the deep satisfaction of directing my own education. I wasn’t rebelling; I was taking responsibility. I was learning because I wanted to learn. And I learned more in that season than I ever had before—because I was finally doing it in a way that made sense to me. Her silence made that possible.

She trusted that I could learn. She modelled a kind of teaching that wasn’t performative or prescriptive, but quietly empowering. That kind of mentorship doesn’t announce itself. It doesn’t need to.

I lost contact after school. I heard she became a principal, that she had a distinguished career. I’ve never been able to thank her.

But I carry her influence with me. In the way I hold space for others. In how I structure learning environments not around how I want to teach, but around how others are best able to learn. I trust people’s agency because she trusted mine.

She let me learn. And it changed everything.

The One Who Let Me Learn

I sat in the front row
not to listen
but to disappear
into the quiet order of my own understanding.

She saw.
She must have seen.

She let me learn
on my own terms.
And in that silence
I heard something new:
trust.

Years passed.
I never thanked her.
She never knew.

But now, when I make space
for another to grow
in their own direction,
I carry her with me—
the one who taught me nothing,
and gave me everything.