Columbus student struggles to overcome a reputation that wasn’t even hers

Angela was always quiet.

She hardly spoke in class — to me, to her classmates, to anyone. She kept her head lowered, would come in, find her seat in the back, and remain stoic the entire period. We often had heated debates or highly charged discussions, but Angela would pull her long hair toward her face and hide behind a façade I couldn’t seem to crack.

On one particular day, Angela looked especially down. Relentless in my pursuit to break her shell, I held her back after the bell rang to see what was wrong. At first she was reluctant to talk, but after some gentle prodding, she finally spoke. After that first difficult word came out, the flood gates opened, and she poured her heart out.

She told of an incident that happened in seventh grade. It was a nondescript event that many would consider trivial, but for Angela, it was life-altering. Most of us would chalk up the circumstance to kids being kids or the middle school madness rite of passage. But for Angela, she was still walking in the shame three years later.

Angela liked a boy in class. He was cute and popular. She was quiet and innocent. Another girl who was not so quiet and not so innocent liked the same boy and began a vicious crusade to ruin Angela. The mean-spirited seventh grader fabricated wild rumors about Angela, causing my sweet student to be ostracized by her classmates.

Three years later, the young sophomore was still battling against a reputation that wasn’t even hers.

I can preach all day to my students about the importance of building and sustaining a quality, sound reputation. I can prompt them toward excellence in word and deed, but the fact remains, that sometimes their reputations are so deep-rooted, so wrongly instilled in their minds and hearts, that all the positivity in the world can’t introduce them to their own potential.

To battle her way out of a bad reputation seemed impossible to poor Angela. And the reality is, recreating herself was a challenging task. She knew that. The unfortunate feature of her story is that she didn’t have the gumption, nor the fortitude, nor the support at home to find her way out of the abyss.

So for the next two years, I watched Angela walk the halls in a shame that didn’t belong to her.

Creating a reputation is easy, if you think about it. Speak loudly enough or often enough, and your words can formulate an identity. Make a few poor decisions or even a collection of good ones, and your reputation is confirmed. Overcoming a reputation, however, is an amazing struggle. For Angela, regardless of how misguided the identity was that surrounded her, she never was able to erase what her peers thought of her, and ultimately, what she thought of herself.

I think about Angela’s story quite often. She makes me think about how I speak to my students and how I speak of them. I venture to say there are many kids who have come into my classroom throughout the years with very similar stories — maybe not as desperate as Angela, but certainly kids who are undergoing an identity crisis, weighing in their minds what they hear people say about them against what they feel to be true. Once again, I stop to acknowledge just how impactful our words can be, and I recommit myself to watching my tongue, both in the classroom and out.

This story was originally published February 7, 2017 at 2:28 PM with the headline "Columbus student struggles to overcome a reputation that wasn’t even hers."