Sue Schindler remembers the moment as if it was yesterday. She was eight years old and she was terrified. Sitting beside her was her dad who was about to call her third-grade teacher. For a young daughter of a father who was known to raise his voice now and then, those few seconds of uncertainty felt like an eternity. “In those days,” she recalled, “kids were called on the carpet in class either because they were disruptive or were academically struggling. I was the second.”

Sue dramatized the impact of her early years before our Toast of the Town of Kenwood Toastmasters Club this past week in a speech, and with it, some powerful lessons that we all can learn from.

“I didn’t care about academics that year.,” Sue continued. “Mrs. Seim would walk through the room and look at our papers. She would look at me and say, ‘You are just not like your sisters.’ What she meant was, I was stupid. I wasn’t understanding and my sisters were so much smarter.”
Such a deflating choice of words from an adult who, in that moment, could have just as easily bolstered her student instead. Had Mrs. Seim delved into why Sue wasn’t achieving high scores like her sisters, that third grade teacher would have learned it was just at the end of the last school year when Sue’s mother died suddenly. That kind of tragedy is not easy for anyone, especially a little girl who would never again have her mom to greet her in the morning or to ask her about her day in the evening.

Luckily for Sue, she had a father who understood.

“My dad was really cool and assured me that I would catch up,” Sue told us. “That was a special time with him. One of the things I loved about my dad was that he never said to me, ‘You are not like your sisters.’ Instead he’d looked at what I was studying and went, ‘No wonder you didn’t understand it. This is how I learned it in school. And this is how I am going to teach you.’
And all of a sudden I caught up.”

At the end of that year, Sue was promoted to fourth grade. And she was super excited to be able to spend her days surrounded by friends. However, instead, she was sent to general education. Again, Sue was devastated. She had worked so hard to catch up…and it didn’t matter. It didn’t pay off.

It was yet another lesson in punishment for a girl who had not even reached her teen years.

“The first time I stepped into Mrs. Clark’s room I could feel a difference. It was like right then she never saw any of us as having possible greatness. We were those general education kids she was forced to teach and to get that paycheck,” Sue recalled. “By the time I was in fifth grade, I was purposefully putting answers down incorrectly because I didn’t want to stand out as a kid who knew the answers when others didn’t.”
What a difference a year can make

Whether by fate or luck, in Sue’s sixth grade, she found herself in the classroom of Ms. Strickland, one of those very special teachers who saw in every child their awesomeness.

“She didn’t care what level you were on or what grade you were on, she knew that we all had possible greatness, and luckily, she took me under her wing and encouraged me,” Sue told us.

By the seventh grade, Sue was back with her friends and never looked back again.

Ms. Strickland and her dad made such a huge impact on Sue that while in college, she switched to special education path because, she told us, “I saw that those kids were the ones that were put into the basement classrooms, in the makeshift janitor closets. They were told they didn’t have possible greatness. If I could take what I learned from my dad and teach them at their ability level and say, ‘hey you guys are great,’ I knew I too could make a difference. And I did.”

With that, Sue looked out into our Club, and posed these two challenges.

1. It is so easy to label people without thinking even before a word comes out of your mouth. Instead, look at people for their potential greatness. Delete those labels and negative judgements. Reach out and say hi.
2. When you go home tonight, look in the mirror and see your own possible greatness and what you have to offer.

A personal note:

I most definitely see and admire Sue’s awesomeness. She and I first came to know each other when we worked together years ago at an organization called the Inclusion Network, which promoted the inclusion of people with disabilities. We reconnected on LinkedIn last year when she reached out to me, out of the clear blue, to tell me how impressed she was with my work on a project. Little did she know, it happened to be a time when I really needed encouragement. It was fate, just as it was fate for her to find herself in Ms. Strickland’s classroom at just the right time. Sue has been a shining light for me ever since. She is one of the most uplifting people I have ever come to know and has this magical way of bringing out the best in everyone. My world is a better place for having her in it.