The summer I spent volunteering at the community literacy center, I met a second-grader named Devon who hated reading. Not just disliked it — hated it, with the full-body defiance only a seven-year-old can muster. Every afternoon he'd slump into the chair, arms crossed, daring me to make him care. I'd been told to stick to the curriculum, but something about his defiance felt familiar. I remembered being ten, staring at a chemistry textbook, convinced I wasn't a science person. It took Mr. Patel's off-hand comment — "you're not bad at this, you're just bored" — to reframe everything. So I stopped assigning Devon worksheets and started asking what he found interesting. Dinosaurs. Of course. We read about the Triassic period, the Cretaceous, the asteroid. Within three weeks he was reading at home. What I learned wasn't about teaching. It was about assumptions — the ones we make about others and the ones we make about ourselves. I'd carried "not a science person" for years before someone challenged it. Devon carried "bad at reading" until someone noticed he was just bored. Growth, I've realized, often begins when someone refuses to accept the label you've given yourself.