I grew up in a very poor rural community and attended a small County High School. Fortunately, we had some great teachers at our school that really worked hard to help us all succeed in life. For the most part, if you had the desire to learn then the tools were available to you for doing so. Unfortunately, there were a few rare exceptions that were bad teachers who were locked into the unionized education system and could not be fired. I hold a grudge to this day for the valuable time they wasted and the holes that were produced in my otherwise wonderful education. One of those holes was in the English language, I will not go into details because the teacher has passed away but her children are still alive and may one day read this. She was a woman that would remind you of Aunt Bea to look at her, but she was a terrible teacher who mistreated her students through favoritism and incompetence. The interesting part was that the students she most favored were her biggest tormentors, and she was too ignorant to even realize it. They were constantly playing tricks on her and disrupting class, knowing that she was going to blame someone else for their misdeeds.

I missed two years then of English in high school that was impossible to recover. The teacher that I had my Senior year did her best to repair the damage, she went above and beyond to try to fill in those gaps, an entire class with two missing years worth! I saw her cry at our ignorance, why? Because that bad teacher was still at the school and still hurting other kids and there was absolutely nothing that she could do about it. She knew that she was basically going to be constantly teaching Seniors on a ninth and tenth-grade level until that teacher retired, and it was extremely frustrating for us all.

I have met a lot of people on Steemit so far, but none more genuine than you and none that inspires or encourages me more. One thing about you is that I'm pretty sure that you would have been buds with my wife and sister in high school. They were best friends (We never dated during those days) and I think that they probably had similar experiences in life that you had except a few years sooner. They had their own click of free-spirited fun-loving girls who liked to appear as if they were living on the edge when in reality they were all "Good" girls just out having fun. They were all smart in their own ways, but they would sneak out on the weekends to smoke, drink and attend parties. They came with each other and left with each other, thus being where the boys were without being with the boys. I get the feeling that you would have fit right in with that group.