When I was young, I did not know that I had speech problem until I was a teenager when many of my classmates made fun of me.
I actually discovered later in life that my tongue was shorter than most people.
A few of them would imitate the way I talked and laughed over it.
It was definitely a terrible experience since I was humiliated in front of the whole class.
I made an effort to improve my spoken language.
Back then, my parents were not aware of the need for speech therapy for me.
I bought a cheap microphone that was able to connect to my home radio channel for me to listen and correct my own pronunciation when I spoke into it.
I did lots of tongue exercises daily to enable my tongue to be more flexible.
I listened to the newscasters and tried to imitate them.
It took me about half a year to overcome my speech disability.
I was not able to know the future but I eventually took up teaching as a career in my adulthood.
If I had left my speech problem alone, I would not have cleared the interview during my application for the teaching job.
As a teacher, I do see students with learning difficulties and my story became a success story for them.
If they do not give up, they can choose to overcome their learning difficulties.
Everyone of us has our weaknesses but our weaknesses can become our greatest strength when we overcome them.
We simply need to take off our own handcuff to make the change.
Just imagine that I had to use my spoken words to conduct lessons daily in school.
I have already been teaching for almost twenty years and I should have taught more than a thousand students by now.
I am also given the opportunities to conduct workshops for teachers from other schools.
I would never be able to do what I do today if I simply accepted that the hole was supposed to be there in the bucket and there was nothing we could do to fix it.
I hope you enjoy reading my personal story that is an entry to the [EcoTrain Question of The Week](EcoTrain Question of The Week).
