Two More Student Stories.....

Two more student stories, from way, way back at the beginning of my career. It seems the longer ago they happened, the more likely I am to remember them.

Katydid is encouraging me to write these stories down and turn them into a book. I just don't know how I'm going to tie all these elements into a plot. But for now I'll get the thoughts down and worry about how they fit together later.

The first three years of my career, I taught middle school. It wasn't by choice, but when the principal called me on Saturday before school started on Monday (yeah, AFTER pre-planning had occurred...I walked in on the first day WITH THE STUDENTS), I jumped at the chance to teach ANYWHERE they would give me a chance. And oh yeah...a paycheck.

We were doing a spelling/capitalization lesson one day, and we were talking about the four seasons. Not the singing group, because clearly then it would have been capitalized. I was telling the students that the seasons of the year are NOT typically capitalized, unless they happen to be someone's name, like a girl named Summer. 

This voice SNORTED from the back of the room. "Summer?" (Only it came out more like "Summah?" because we live in the South and I was teaching in ... never mind.) "Who gon' name a kid Summah?"

I paused. Long pause. "Gee, Nefrateri. I don't know who would do such a thing."

******

The other student story came from a young lady whose face I can still see clearly in my mind, but her name escapes me. By this time I had moved to the high school, where I felt like I belonged and my sarcasm was often understood and sometimes even appreciated. The young lady in question was in one of my advanced classes, a quiet girl who was a teacher-pleaser but not in an obnoxious, annoying way.

She wrote me a letter at the end of the year, and I swear I kept it, but I can't find it after moving a dozen times or so, once stealthily in the middle of the night, but that's a story for another night. It was a pretty long letter, full of typical end-of-the-year stuff and thanking me for being her teacher, but one line at the end of the letter has stuck with me for the rest of my life. And I think it always will.

She said, "You have taught me that my parents were wrong. All white people aren't bad."

I wonder where she is today. I hope the sentiment has stayed with her.

Student News......

I got a text message from a former student yesterday afternoon, a girl who graduated from our school two years ago. She said "I've got some news for you," and I was almost afraid to respond.

When our students tell us they've got "news" for us, it can mean acceptance into a college of choice, or a new body piercing, or an upcoming court date, or a baby is on the way.

This girl immediately became one of my favorites when she came to our school. I know I'm not supposed to have favorites, but I can't help it. If you have my cell phone number, my personal email address, or my blog address, consider yourself a favorite.

One of our very first encounters was when I approached her about what she was wearing. She had on a spaghetti-strap tank top (do they even call them spaghetti straps anymore?), clearly a violation of the dress code. She was sitting at her computer, naturally, so I approached her from behind, put my hands on her shoulders, and leaned over to murmur, "You need to cover up."

She looked up at me with an angelic smile - NOT a devilish one - and said, "That's okay. I'm not cold!" I was dumbfounded for just a second, and then she burst out laughing. And she got her jacket without arguing. We were friends from that moment on.

She was smart enough to know that the one thing she needed to do most desperately in her life - after graduating from high school, of course - was to get away from her dysfunctional parents. She told me early on that she intended to join the Coast Guard upon graduation, and we set the wheels in motion by getting a recruiter out to our school. [Unlike most recruiters, it was like PULLING TEETH to get him out there. What's up with that?]

She followed through and left for basic training right after graduation. I was so proud of her. She was stationed at Panama City, Florida, and I thought that was just far enough away from her family to be safe but not so far as to be painful.

The next text message I got from her was that she was pregnant, the result of a relationship she wasn't even supposed to be having because he too was in the Coast Guard.

Sigh.

She brought him to meet me on one of her visits home, with her cute little pregnant belly. (I suppose it would have been hard to leave the belly behind.) She said her mother was going to move to Florida to help her take care of the baby.

Double sigh.

In one of those odd coincidences that have occurred throughout my life and I should be used to by now, I sent her a text message around her due date asking how she was doing and if the baby was still scheduled to arrive on time. I didn't know it, but she was already in labor and had texted me that she was on the way to the hospital. Our texts must have crossed in mid-air. I crocheted a blanket for the baby boy and sent it to them.

I finally got the nerve to answer her text yesterday, and her news was that she's getting married in November. I am thrilled for her, even though she is very young, and the news was much better than if she had been pregnant again. The best news of all would be that she's marrying the baby daddy, but I didn't have the heart to ask. I couldn't think of how to word it without sounding judgmental.

She's stationed in Maryland now, the wedding is going to be in Virginia, and she was texting me to let me know she wants me to be there. That was very touching. I'm going to try my best to go. She said it would either be the 13th or the 20th. Would it be crass of me to text her and request that she get married on the 20th? That's an open date for football. The 13th is the Auburn game.