I have a female student who is a junior in my personal finance class this semester. She is a quiet girl, and it sometimes seems to me that it is her goal to make it through the day without anyone noticing her.

She is a hard worker, but often tries to write down every word I say as I teach with the intention of trying to memorize it later. I try to encourage her to spend more time listening so she understands what I am teaching, but she seems so frantic in her note-taking, as if having those notes is somewhat of a security blanket.

This girl is not what you would call a strong test-taker. In fact, she often does very poorly on tests. I feel awful for her because she wants so badly to do well, but her memorization tactic is dragging her down. Personal finance is not something that can be memorized in its entirety because the concepts need to be applied to different situations, therefore resulting in different answers each time.

I always let her take her tests in a resource room, where she is free from the judgments of her peers when it takes her the whole period to finish while the rest of them finish the test with time to spare. Usually she comes back to me saying she wasn’t able to finish in just that one period, and my heart goes out to her because oftentimes she looks as though she is about to cry. I give her another period to work on it, and another if needed. After all, the goal here is to see what she can do with what I’ve taught her, not to make her feel bad for being slower than her peers, or to say ‘too bad, that’s all the time you get, I guess you’ll fail by default because you left half the test blank’. I know this girl is making an honest effort and so I don’t mind giving her extra time. I just wish she didn’t have so much anxiety about taking the tests – I can see it on her face. She is so scared of getting the answer wrong it paralyzes her and makes her doubt herself. A little self-confidence could do this girl a world of good, I thought.

I recently bought a small but thick book of quotes that are artistically drawn or decorated. I  bought it with the idea in mind that I would rip pages out and give them to people, in person or anonymously, to brighten their day. I found one that applied to this girl perfectly. It said something to the effect of “Trust yourself. You know more than you think you do.” I folded it, wrote her name on it, and gave it to her before class one day. She opened it, read it, and a shy but big smile broke out across her face. Moments like these are why I became a teacher.