Unlike many teachers today, I don't tend to stay in contact with my students after they graduate high school. Even though I have a Facebook account, I don't have other forms of social media; I've stayed away from Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr, Snapchat, etc. On Facebook, I have my privacy settings set in a way that makes me virtually unfindable (I know that's not really a word...) unless I share mutual friends with the person searching for me. I know that some teachers like to keep in touch with students through social media, but since I am relatively young and always try to appear professional at work, I don't really want any of my present or former students to see pictures of me in shorts, sun dresses, bathing suits, etc. I am so careful about trying to keep students from finding me that I have even avoided liking my school's Facebook page, friending some of my colleagues, and following a friend's local business. Despite my precautions, about a year ago, one of my former students found me and sent me a friend request.
The student who found me was one who I had a special relationship with while she was in high school. Due to the fact that she was (is) an ELL and had already switched schools a couple of times, when I met her as a student in my English 11 class 5 years ago, she was already 19 years old; she was jaded, depressed, and wanted to drop out of school. I couldn't blame her - at 19, she had already been married and divorced in Mexico, she had been raising her sister's daughter for at least 2 years, and she was pretty much supporting herself and some of her other family members financially.
When I first tried to get her to work in a group with other students, she stayed after class to tell me she "didn't like people" and, therefore, wanted to work on her own. Over that year, I helped her slowly come out of her shell mainly by listening to her and encouraging her to keep going. When she found out she would need to come back for one more semester the following year in order to graduate, once again, she wanted to give up. I talked her through it, and I forced her to sign a paper that said, "I promise to come back next year and graduate." I kept that paper pinned to the wall behind my desk until she graduated the following year.
So when she found me on Facebook, I accepted her friend request. (She had come to visit me and another teacher a few times at lunch since she graduated, so it didn't seem totally out of the blue that she had looked me up and found me.) Soon after I accepted her request, she sent me a message asking for advice. Once again, she was in a situation that had not turned out as she'd hoped, and she did not know what to do. Because I don't have any of my apps set up to notify me instantly, I gave her my cell phone number in case she needed to reach me in an emergency. Not long after, I got a few text messages and a few calls, always when she was in need of advice; we continued to stay in contact.
Two weeks ago, she sent me a text asking if we could get together this past week before she moved to Tennessee on Saturday (yesterday). After texting back and forth a few times, trying to figure out a date and a time, she also told me that she was going to get married on Wednesday. (I knew that she was in a relationship and had recently gotten engaged.) We decided to meet for lunch on Monday.
At lunch, we talked about her plans to move with her 9-month-old son and about her upcoming wedding. It was then that she told me that only 3 people knew that she and her fiance were planning on getting married so soon, and she asked me to be at the ceremony, which was going to be at 3 PM at the courthouse in San Diego. I don't know if I was more surprised by the fact that I was one of the 3 people who knew about the wedding or by her request that I be there; I told her I would try to make it work.
On Tuesday at lunch, a current student of mine (the one I've mentioned before who often comes into my room to talk to me) came in to talk and to make up some work. This student has a slew of personal problems, including health issues that have caused her to miss quite a bit of school this year. Over the weekend, just when she thought things were starting to look up, her grandfather passed away. On Monday, she had been in a really bad mood, and she didn't even look at me when she walked in and out of class. On Tuesday when she walked in at lunch, the first thing she did was apologize for how she had acted on Monday and then she unloaded everything that had been going on since the last time we'd talked a couple of weeks before. I listened. She told me that she'd almost called me on Saturday night because she didn't know what else to do. (I'd given her my number a couple of months before after she told me that she'd been kicked out of her house the previous weekend and had nowhere to go.) She said she didn't call because it was late, and she didn't want to wake me up.
As depressed as she was over her grandfather's passing, her main concern at that moment was figuring out how to raise her grades. Due to her absences, she had missed a lot of assignments in all of her classes, and if she didn't get her grades up by Wednesday (the next day), she wouldn't be allowed to play in her lacrosse game. As we talked, it turned out that it was "senior night" at the game the next day, which meant that before the game there was going to be a small ceremony honoring all of the seniors on the team. She really wanted to be able to participate in the ceremony since she was team captain, and, in addition to possibly not being allowed to play due to her grades, she was also upset because her father told her that he wasn't going to be there. (In other words, he didn't care to be there.) I asked her what time the game was and told her I would be there. I don't think she registered what I said at first, because she continued to talk about how nobody would be there for her and then said, "You should come." I told her, "You get your grades up, so you're allowed to play, and I will be there."
That afternoon, I confirmed the time and place of the wedding with my former student, and I made a plan that would get me down to San Diego for a 3 o'clock wedding, allow my son to take a nap at my brother and sister-in-law's house, and get us both back up to Fallbrook by 6:30 for the lacrosse game.
On Wednesday, my current student brought me her make-up work. I graded it quickly and entered it in the grade book; it was enough to raise her grade from an F to a C! I signed a grade-change form for her and then rushed home to get my son before heading down to San Diego. About 10 minutes after I'd left school, my phone rang. Even though I didn't recognize the number, I picked up; it was my student. She was distraught because one of the women in the counseling office told her that they could not accept the grade-change since I did not deliver it to them. I told her not to worry. I called the school and left messages for both the registrar (explaining the situation) and her counselor (updating her on the situation). Soon after, I got a call from the counselor saying that everything was taken care of and the student would be allowed to play. I was home by 1 and back in the car, with my son, by 1:15. As long as there was no traffic, I had it timed to my brother's house by 2:15 and to the courthouse by 2:50 - 10 minutes before the ceremony.
As I was driving, I got a call from the bride asking if I would be there by 2:30 because they needed a witness! I said I was on my way and would be there by 2:45 or 2:50. I got to my brother's house as planned, dropped off my son, and continued on my way. As I was getting off the freeway in downtown San Diego at 2:40, my phone rang again. It was the bride asking me for the spelling of my name and my address. I gave it to her, parked, and made my way to the courthouse. I found her and her soon-to-be husband on the second floor, finishing their paperwork. Aside from her baby, I was the only other person there.
The ceremony took place almost exactly at 3. It was only a few minutes long, but it was beautiful. I held her son and video-taped while they said their vows and exchanged rings. I was honored to be able to take part in this event, and I am tearing up right now thinking about it. Afterwards, I took a few pictures of the newlyweds outside the courthouse. When the bride asked me if I could stay and get something to eat with them, I told her how I had to get back up to Fallbrook for the lacrosse game. She smiled understandingly; after all, it was this same quality about me that had brought us together and brought me down to San Diego to be the witness in her wedding. As we parted ways, she shouted that they would have a bigger celebration the following year; I told her I would be there. Before turning the corner, I looked back at her one last time and smiled as I thought about how I had literally changed her life. As teachers, we know that we affect our students' lives on a daily basis, but we don't often have the opportunity to actually see concrete evidence of the influence we have on those lives. And off I sped to Fallbrook...
We got to the game and out of the car at about 6:37. As we were walking up, I could hear my student giving her speech, and I was sorry that she would not see me sitting in the stands, listening. However, we stayed at the game up until the break after the second quarter. Luckily, my student saw me then, waved, and thanked me for coming. I shouted, "Good luck!" to her before we headed home for bedtime.
The next day, she walked in and handed me a letter. At first, I thought it was a note excusing her for being tardy, since she came in after the bell rang, but then I saw that it was in her handwriting and started, "Dear Ms. Lewis..." It was a note thanking me for everything I'd done for her. In it, she admitted that she wouldn't still be here if it wasn't for me.
Now, I'm not telling you these things to impress you or anything like that. As teachers, we have these kinds of connections on a regular basis; it's the nature of the job. I'm telling you these things because I think sometimes, especially at this time of year when we are starting to get sick of some of our students (it's okay... you can admit it...) and when we are starting to get sick of going to work every day, we need to remember why we became teachers in the first place. Contrary to popular belief, we didn't become teachers in order to get summers off (especially because every teacher knows that you don't really get summers - or any other time - "off"); we became teachers in order to help young people learn and grow. We give up our time before school, during breaks, at lunch, and after school because we care about our students and their futures. With some students, there is nothing more to our relationship than the brief interactions we have with them in our classes each day, but we love them all nonetheless.
Unfortunately, some of our students don't realize just how much we love them and just how much we would do for them. Although I didn't mention it above, this past Wednesday actually started with a very sobering discussion about suicide in my 1st period class. It was exactly one week after the memorial service for a student who committed suicide over Spring Break, and, even though nobody ever brought up this student specifically, I'm sure she was on all of their minds. It was a discussion that brought tears to the eyes of more than a few students in the class. I admitted to them, as I admit to any class that talks about suicide, that my biggest fear as a teacher is having one of my students commit suicide. I told them that I don't know if I would be able to deal with that empty desk. I opened up to them about some of the suicides I'd experienced in my life, and I read them a letter written by Frank Warren to a 16-year-old girl who was contemplating suicide.
When it comes down to it, teachers not only change lives - we save lives. I am writing this post to remind you of that. If you have not done it recently, tell your students that you care about them. Show them that you are there for them, even when nobody else is. Help them to understand that, no matter how alone they might feel, you are only ever an email away. As I said above, we are teachers because even though there may be nothing more to our relationship with our students than the brief interactions we have with them in our classes each day, we love them all nonetheless.
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