I never had her as a teacher. Occasionally, though, I would walk past her classroom, and whenever I did, I would look in.
She was always doing something, always helping someone. It was clear from the look on her face she liked it and liked them. But what always struck me most – and what I still remember best all these years later – was the look on their faces.
They admired her.
Fifteen years of teaching have taught me this: Being steeped in knowledge will earn a teacher the respect and appreciation of students. So will being prepared and demanding and current and decent. But admiration takes something more.
To earn that takes empathy.
And empathy isn't easy.
Get past the piercings and the purple highlights and I suspect young people today are not much different than young people have ever been. That, of course, is not the prevailing sentiment. Public opinion – or at least Hollywood producers and YouTube videos – will have us believe if young people nowadays aren't out shooting up, they're out getting knocked up or beaten up or worse.
It is an ugly fabrication. And an unfair one.
Yes, young people today have problems. Yes, some of their problems are enormous and tragic and sad. And like they have always done and will always do, they carry their problems wherever they go. School included.
When I started teaching, I had a couple of college degrees and had spent the better part of a decade as a journalist. I couldn't have been less prepared. Nowhere in the job description does it say teachers are required to help students carry their problems. Yet it might be the greatest obligation a teacher has.
She understood this.
To her they shared their problems. They did, I suspect, because they trusted her and because something told them she, too, had felt pain.
Young people are reluctant to let us shoulder the load unless we have shouldered one ourselves. I suppose they want some proof that we are up to the task. It seems to be a prerequisite before they will confide in us their confidences.
So besides reading them poetry and teaching them prepositions, whenever the need arose, she permitted them to unpack their troubles.
Year.
After year.
After year.
Where she gathered the strength is a wonder to me. What, after all, weighs more than woe? It wears like the wind.
But she never said a word, never entered a complaint, never begged relief. Which made what she did all the more remarkable.
Some claim there are no teachers like her anymore. That, too, is a myth. I still walk past classrooms and, occasionally, I still look in. Often, I see the same look on the faces of those students as I saw on the faces of hers. Or just as often a student will suddenly turn to me and ask – unexpectedly, out of the blue – if I happen to know a certain teacher, and when I say I do, at that moment – right then – admiration will appear.
No, she was no teacher of mine. I was even more fortunate.
She was a mother.