by Angela Grant
My all-time favorite teacher was my fifth grade teacher at Tomoka Elementary, Ms. Margaret Wyland. Like a typical kid my age, fifth grade, for me, was an awkward time. Besides being a super-skinny girl who was taller than most of the boys in her class, I was also being bussed to a school where no one lived in my neighborhood, and I didn’t have classes with many of the students on the bus. The icing on my cake of quirkiness was that I was in the gifted program, so I was teased and taunted very often. But in Ms. Wyland’s class I was made to feel like a queen…Cleopatra in particular. You see I wore my hair in a braided style that Ms. Wyland thought was reminiscent of the Queen of the Nile. So once I entered her classroom, I forgot the jeering I had experienced shortly before walking through the door, and I embodied the presence of a queen. All the things that made me different and were often targeted by bullies, Ms. Wyland taught me to embrace. She even nicknamed me Cleo, and I wrote countless short stories about my adventures as Queen Cleo navigating the difficulties of modern adolescent life. Over time, I wasn’t embodying queendom just when I walked through the door of her classroom, but all of the time. I even went on to bravely audition for a solo in our school Christmas program and got it! Evolving into a more confident and self-assured girl was all because of the encouragement I received from Ms. Wyland. She made a huge impact on my life by teaching me to look at the things about me that were different and odd as unique and valuable. I left Ms. Wyland’s fifth grade class unsure of exactly what my future would hold, but knowing it would be bright, because I would be bringing all of my unique and valuable talents to the table. Because of her influence, it has been a wonderful journey.
ANGELA RUBIANNA GRANT is Senior Event Planner for the University of Maryland University College (UMUC). She is a graduate of Spruce Creek High School, the University of Florida, and holds an MBA from UMUC.