Letters like these from former students make it all WORTH it!

Received this e-mail from a former student: Dear Ms. Walker I hope we get to talk more often. I miss you because you rock!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! You helped me with the sadness I had from the pass of my brother Danny. I made a newspaper of the future for my class AVID and I put in about my life that I named my son Danny because I don' t know how I remember this so much but I promised him I will name my son after him. I hope you write back about anything. If you are wondering about any of your old students I probably could tell you how they are doing. "

She was a student I looped with through kinder and first and right before her kinder year, her baby brother tragically passed away and she had a really hard time coping.  I'm so thankful to still keep in touch, 6 years later.  I've spent a lot of time with her family, taken her to dinner, and even shown up at my former school to eat lunch with her and some of my other former kiddos.

Sometimes we think we go into teaching to teach math and reading, but we end up teaching students how to cope and survive in the real world and how to be good humans.  This is why I will continue to teach.  You never know how you'll change the life of just one student.