My eighth grade year mornings would start that third-hour algebra class with Mr. Vento at North Shore Middle School. I looked forward to it every single day. No matter how much stress it brought to me Mr. Vento always made me laugh.

I received my first test back getting a 1 on the top of the page. Seeing that score brought me to tears. I cried in the back of his class with my test flipped over with all of the red marks across the page. It was the first time I had received a bad grade and it wouldn’t be the last time. The next test we took was not any better.

Mr. Vento didn’t give up on me. He gave me the option to retake the tests but he didn’t let me quit. He wasn’t going to move me to the lower math class just because of bad test scores. He had told me to move around in different spots in class to take the test to try and help me. That has stuck with me even since today and every time we take a test I will move seats just to help me out as Mr. Vento had said four years ago.

I don’t think I ever said thank you enough to Mr. Vento for how much he allowed me to grow as a student. By teaching me how to receive that bad grade and that mistakes would happen. He would tell me what I needed so I could improve. Come in every once and a while for help on the unit and to ask questions. Even if my scores weren’t perfect I saw them slowly getting better.

He showed me that with some hard work I could do it. I had a conference with him around the halfway point in my 8th-grade year, with my mom. The question had come up of what to do my freshman year and to my surprise, he said I should take a block class (Geometry and Algebra B). Without his help, I don’t think I would have pushed myself through high school and all of those classes where I got a bad grade on the test I would always remember back to how he helped me and pushed me through, and made me try so much harder. As well as knowing that my teachers weren’t there to fail me but they were there for me. I think this will be something that I will take with me even through college and farther.

Mr. Vento had wanted the best for me. After that conference, I knew he had confidence in my ability, and even with not doing great on every test of his he knew I had the potential to make it. And if it wasn’t for him pushing me to do better I don’t think that I would’ve made it to Pre-Calc. I don’t think I wouldn’t be able to reach my ability to take physics as well as other advanced classes. I couldn’t have done it without Mr. Vento’s help to not let me give up even when I know I wanted to quit.