I Beat the Odds_ From Homelessness, to the Blind Side, and Beyond - Michael Oher [44]
Chapel was about forty-five minutes or an hour long, and would start after second period. Everyone in school met together in the big auditorium and we basically had a church service with singing and a lesson and then some announcements. It was a little weird for me at first because I'd never gone to church regularly except when I lived with Velma. When I was living at home we would go every now and then, but then it was usually to ask for food or money afterward. It was nice to see so many people come together for no other reason than to worship, and I was a part of it. The service style was very different from what I had known going to church with Velma, which was a little looser and had some different music, but I enjoyed it once I got used to it. It was a nice way to pause for a little bit and feel focused on something other than the rush of school or pressures of grades.
And that pressure was building up for me. As nice as everyone was in trying to make me feel welcome, I had a much harder time trying to fit in with my studies. Getting into Briarcrest was a huge win for me, because I knew that it was the first of a lot of steps to get me to college, on to the pros, and most important, out of the ghetto.
But the going was rough. It was very difficult at first, and my biology teacher, Mrs. Beasley, was the first one who caught on that I did know the material. She noticed that I seemed to do okay answering questions she asked in class, but when it came to reading and answering questions on a test, I was stuck. She tried reading the test out loud to me, and when she found I could answer the questions that way, she realized that I wasn't slow at all--I just had never been in a caring classroom long enough to learn how to study and test effectively.
As soon as that became clear, all the teachers and administrators snapped into action to help figure out the best way to help me catch up and strengthen my study skills. The biggest challenge for me wasn't learning the material--it was having to break old habits and get away from comfortable behaviors that I had slipped into over the past ten years. I couldn't coast anymore; I had to really put my brain to work! I had to learn a whole new way of thinking and living--and I just needed people around me who cared enough to show me how to do that.
Sometimes I was pulled out of class to do extra work, and sometimes the teacher would stay after class and do some one-on-one tutoring with me. And the more I learned, the more I wanted to learn. Some of my teachers told me later that I was one of the most eager students they'd ever had. I looked forward to school and was excited to study because it was such a thrill for me to be learning so much so quickly.
The hardest part at first was not grasping the material; it was grasping the idea that the teachers actually cared about my progress. Except for one year in Ms. Logan's class and at Ida B. Wells, I had never known that kind of concern. Everyone seemed to care about improving my study skills so I could improve my grades, and I felt like I was starting to move forward.
I also realized that I couldn't get away with my old standby trick from the public schools anymore: copying directly from the textbook. If we had an assignment, I would open up the book and just write down a page or two, exactly as it appeared in the book. I figured that the right answer had to be on the page somewhere. The first time I did it in public school and got back a B on the assignment, I knew that there was no way the teacher was even looking at what I was doing because otherwise it would have been obvious that I'd taken the easy way out. But at Briarcrest I realized I was going to have to work for every grade I earned--and the crazy thing was, I was happy to do