Analysis of “I Became Her Target” by Rodger Wilkins
The pencil snap came first. Then the sharp scrape of a desk sliding across linoleum as Miss Bean's hand slapped my shoulder and announced to the entire seventh-grade class that I was her new project. Until I read Rodger Wilkins's essay "I Became Her Target" last semester in my community college composition course, I had never seen that feeling in print: the strange mix of dread and relief when a teacher decides you matter enough to fix. Wilkins recounts his experience as one of the few Black students in a 1940s Michigan junior high, where his new history teacher publicly challenges him and ultimately transforms his academic confidence.
His essay demonstrates that genuine education often arrives through confrontation rather than comfort, that the most effective teachers refuse to let students hide, and that what feels like humiliation in the moment can become the foundation of self-respect years later. Though the essay runs barely four pages, it captures a universal truth about learning that my own classroom experiences have confirmed again and again.
Wilkins wrote this piece decades after the events, looking back at his transition from an all-Black school in New York to the overwhelmingly white environment of Creston High School in Grand Rapids. Miss Bean enters as a first-year teacher determined to make him perform at the level she knows he can reach. The historical context matters: this was 1944, when most white teachers either ignored Black students or expected less from them. Wilkins had learned to keep his head down, to avoid standing out in a place where he already felt conspicuous. Miss Bean's approach, calling on him repeatedly and refusing to accept his silence, violated the unspoken agreement he had made with himself about survival in that space. The essay focuses tightly on this single relationship and its effects, using specific classroom moments to illustrate a larger point about what real teaching requires.
The central tension in the essay is between the student's desire for invisibility and the teacher's insistence on visibility. Wilkins describes wanting to blend into the walls, but Miss Bean kept dragging him into the light with questions he could not answer and attention he did not want. When I read those paragraphs about fumbling through responses while classmates watched, I thought of my own sophomore biology class, where Dr. Ramirez called on me three times in one period about cellular respiration even though my hand stayed glued to my desk. I had stopped preparing because I assumed she would leave me alone if I looked disengaged enough. She did the opposite. Wilkins captures that exact dynamic: the teacher who sees the strategy of hiding and dismantles it piece by piece. Miss Bean's method was not gentle, but it worked because she combined the pressure with genuine expectation. She did not ask easier questions or lower the bar; she waited until he found the answer himself.
What makes the essay powerful is Wilkins's honesty about his initial reaction. He admits he resented her, felt targeted in the worst sense, and wanted to escape her class entirely. Most writing about inspiring teachers skips straight to gratitude, but Wilkins lingers in the discomfort. That semester when I kept getting called on in biology, I complained to my roommate that Dr. Ramirez had it out for me, that she was making an example of the one student who clearly did not care. It took weeks before I admitted I had started studying because I refused to fumble another answer in front of her. Wilkins shows that transformation happening in real time: the shift from anger to effort, from effort to competence, from competence to something like pride. He does not sugarcoat the experience or pretend it felt good while it was happening. The essay's strength lies in that refusal to simplify, in its recognition that growth and discomfort are often the same process.
Some readers might argue that Miss Bean's approach was too harsh, that singling out a student who already felt isolated could have backfired and done real harm. Wilkins himself seems aware of this possibility. He notes that he was vulnerable, that the situation could have gone differently if Miss Bean had been motivated by cruelty rather than conviction. I have watched teachers use similar tactics for the wrong reasons, turning students into examples of failure rather than pushing them toward success. The difference, as Wilkins presents it, was that Miss Bean believed in his ability and made that belief impossible to ignore. She did not mock him or humiliate him for sport; she held up a mirror and refused to let him look away. That distinction matters, but it also requires teachers to know their students well enough to judge what kind of pressure will build rather than break. Not every student in every situation would have responded the way Wilkins did, and the essay does not claim otherwise.
Reading "I Became Her Target" now, as I finish my associate degree and think about transferring, I recognize how much my own path has depended on teachers who would not let me disappear. Dr. Ramirez's cellular respiration questions led to office hours, which led to a research assistant position, which led to my decision to switch from business to biology. None of that would have happened if she had let me sit silent in the back row. Wilkins's essay argues that education at its best is an act of insistence, a refusal to accept the smaller version of ourselves we offer out of fear or habit. Miss Bean saw potential and demanded that Wilkins live up to it, even when he would have preferred she look elsewhere. That kind of teaching takes courage on both sides: the teacher risks being hated, and the student risks failure. But Wilkins shows that the alternative, the polite indifference that lets students coast, is worse. I still think about Miss Bean sometimes when I sit in a lecture hall and wonder whether raising my hand is worth the risk of being wrong.
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