I wrote down in a diary somewhere, years ago, that the coolest people I have ever met are teachers.
That still holds true, even today.
Teachers get to mentor students and get to know them in ways that neither their friends nor their family do. They see worth in students that students don't always recognize in themselves. They can see where to push them and how to keep them from falling over the edge.
I would have been a hot mess if my high school environmental science teacher hadn't rescued me from an impossible class schedule and gotten me the study hall I needed to keep my life in order. Thanks to the encouragement of the dean of the French village at the Concordia Language Villages, I applied for a position as a camp counselor there. I wouldn't have been as confident as I was to complete a capstone project in communication if my media production professors hadn't showed me that they were excited by the work I did for my videos. I don't know if I would have declared a French major as early as my second semester of college if I didn't have a professor who would walk with students after class and get to know them.
Teachers are cool because they still care about you long after they've had you as a student. They are still excited about your success and your life, even if you don't talk as often as you used to.
Once, upon request, I shared a script with one of my high school English teachers that I wrote as a way to cope with the aftermath of an unpleasant breakup. Mind you, this was three years after having her as a teacher. She and a few of my friends and I went out to dinner with her one night, because we were all still close. While we munched on chips and salsa she brought up the script I wrote, looked me in the eye, and said "This is really good. Keep writing." I have.
Another of my high school teachers I didn't really know anything about until I graduated and became Facebook friends with them. That was when I learned that they had a dog (I know it's been a while but I can't recall a time where they ever mentioned having a dog during class), that they had a whole life outside of school, and even now I feel frustrated because I missed out on this opportunity to get to know a really cool person! One day, after taking the AP exam for this class, I woke up in a cold sweat because I realized that I had forgotten one small but crucial detail in one of my written responses that literally marks the difference between getting a 4 and getting a 5 on the exam. Before class that day, I ran into that teacher in the hall and said, "On the AP exam...I forgot to ask the question." It took them a second but then they realized, what I was talking about. Their response was, more or less, "Oh well. That's not going to stop you." They were totally right.
Two weeks ago, a longtime friend, who I will call C, and I visited our high school French teacher, who is retiring next week. My high school friends and I lovingly refer to her as Em-Em-Ee (Mme), the abreviation for Madame. She's the one who instilled in me an understanding and appreciation for French history, castles, Rabelais, and French grammar.
C and I sit with Mme in her classroom as she enters grades into her computer and touches base with the various students that pop by her classroom to turn in makeup work before school officially ends on Friday. Her classroom looks exactly the same as it used to, with the exception of a giant guillotine in the back of the classroom - that's new - and the laptop that she has instead of a dreadfully slow school-issued desktop. Mme invites us to sit down and tries to get some of the affairs on her desk in order before she starts to talk to us. She asks us about what is in our futures now that we've graduated. C tells her that she's going to be an elementary school teacher at a charter school nearby, which makes Mme smile. She asks C if her mom still teaches at Griffith Elementary School, at which the ears of a ninth-grader in the classroom perk up. "Did I hear you say Griffith Elementary School?" She asks.
"Yes, C's mom teaches there. Why, did you go to Griffith Elementary?"
"For a little while," says the ninth grader. "I left in the third grade...Wait, what was your mom's name?"
"Mrs. S," replies C. The ninth grader's eyes go wide. Her face lights up with excitement and she covers her face with her hands because she just can't stand it.
"No!" she exclaims. It's too good to be true. "Mrs. S was my teacher!"
Mme is delighted by the coincidence. "Mrs. S was your teacher? Well, this is her daughter." She smiles at the connection. C gives the ninth grader a hug and asks her if she can take a picture with her so she can tell her mom she met one of her former students. C gets out her phone and they take a selfie.
"Wow, you know! It just goes to show..." starts Mme. I finish the thought.
"It's a small world," I say. "It really is," she agrees.
Mme tells us about that one of her former students will be the French teacher taking her place in the fall. She's pleased that her students will be in very capable hands. I ask her, "Was he the guy who came to speak to our French 2 class once? The one who was in Franche-Comté?" "Yes!" she exclaims. "That's him. He was there right on the border of the Swiss Alps." I remembered him. "He did TAPIF, which is the same program I'm doing in la Réunion." Mme is very excited for me to go to the Reunion Islands - I don't correct her about there only being one island - and she asks me about where I'm going, if there will be electricity and running water. I assure her that la Réunion is fairly well off and has all the modern amenities that mainland France does. Mme says with a twinkle in her eye that she is so proud that so many of her students are going on to be teachers.
I bring up a memory of a really fun day where our French 3 and 4 class were making skits to demonstrate vocabulary and a couple of verb tenses that we learned over the past few weeks. The two men in the class reenacted the movie Anchorman, one of them being "Ron Bourgogne" and the other one being a météorologue. "Il pleut...des hommes! Il pleut des hommes, hallelujah il pleut des hommes, hallelujah-ah!" It's raining...men! Hallelujah it's raining men... I broke character for that entire skit because it was so funny. Mme tells us that our class that year was one of the best in her life. I'd have to say the same.
After a certain point, Mme opens the gifts that we brought her: a gift card from C and a card from me. She reads it in front of us. C doesn't know what it says but gets the gist of it from Mme's comments here and there. At the end, I wrote to her, "j'attends impatiemment le jour où nous sautillerons dans les Champs-Élysées de nouveau." I can't wait for the day where we'll skip down the Champs-Élysées again. That was something we did after I graduated high school: C, Mme, another friend and I all linked arms and skipped down the Champs-Élysées in Paris.
Mme gives us both a hug. We take several pictures together and try not to look too unintentionally goofy. After an hour and a half with Mme, C and I decide that it's probably time to go. Mme is the only teacher left at our high school that we wanted to visit - the rest had retired, died, or weren't people we wanted to visit - and Mme is retiring now too. This will probably be our last time visiting our high school, perhaps until our 10 year reunion.
I didn't really touch on my teachers from before or after high school in this post, but I sincerely appreciate everyone who've seen something in me and encouraged me.
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