Teachers, What Student Will You Never Forget? (r/AskReddit)

teachers of reddit what student will you never forget teaching esl in taiwan i joked with a young student and told him i was hungry not knowing i speak chinese he responded with cheat rbn which translates to each tea not a teacher anymore but there are so so many of them i'll never forget the little boy who was abused from birth to age three before he was finally taken away from his mother who was struggling with a serious drug addiction and adopted by his maternal grandmother he had some delays but he was such a smart little kid who absolutely loved dinosaurs i'll never forget the student who didn't have anything to give me for christmas but he wanted to give me something so badly that he taped his fruit roll up from his lunch onto a piece of paper and hand wrote a christmas card i'll never forget the kid who sobbed in my lap at recess when her mother was going through chemotherapy because she was terrified months later this same kid came running down the hallway and literally leapt into my arms while screaming miss n my mom is going to be okay i'll never forget the kid who noticed that my pencil jar for students who needed pencils was empty so he filled it with his own i'll never forget the little girl who came to school every day with dirty clothes sometimes the same clothes she had on the day before she made her lunch herself at six years old and she never had anything fresh or healthy it was generally packaged because that's what they had she would also hug anyone and everyone because she was so desperate for affection i was a student teacher but the principal was trying to get authorities involved by the time i left i hope she got help i'll never forget the kid who emailed me on the weekends and over holidays just to tell me what's going on and to say hello there are so many more i could go on for ages i was getting my middle school certification in my state this was maybe 3-4 years ago and my college would place us in local schools in the area to partner with an accomplished teacher and get our observation hours in the college had a reputation of putting male teacher candidates in the roughest schools in the area me and my fellow male students had a theory about this but of course we couldn't prove it anyway my first morning there in a very rough all boys middle school in the worst part of the city first period a little boy maybe 10-11 walks into class looks at me and says what are you looking at you ryan gosling looking moth affair i was utterly speechless law i can only assume that was his catch-all term for white men law i'll definitely never forget him i teach at a prison the first inmate i had graduate under my teaching cried when he looked at his diploma he was the first in his entire family to graduate it was quite the accomplishment and i was very moved i taught ged classes in a local prison to the men's sap program these weren't violent offenders they were just addicts that got caught up totally the most rewarding position i have ever had in education seeing those men get their get was incredible one old man he was a connie that traveled the u.s his entire adult life never made it past eighth grade got his get right before the virus shut everything down he came and found me in my classroom and hugged me like a brother and thanked me i still remember his full name he made that much of an impression on me he was due to get released a few weeks later i really hope he's doing well a wonderful young man who was killed in a car accident back in early june 2020 he was in his grade 11 year took him under my wing in grade nine worked on his impulsive behavior colorful language anger management and questionable life choices by grade 10 he was a mentor to incoming grade 9s that had similar issues as himself in grade 11 he was a leader here in the school volunteering joined the arts community and held down to after-school jobs we shook hands every day he'd bring me coffee his last text to me said life is beautiful man and he had recently told me that he wished that i was his dad he wasn't wearing a seat belt coming home from one of those jobs he was killed instantly after being ejected from a car he was a passenger in my commuter went from work every day passes by the exact spot he was killed miss you edward big mike i'm a hs science teacher in an affluent suburb we get this transfer kid in who is about six feet eight inches 350 long thin hulk hogan mullet not bold though and big glasses mike hailed from the hollows of kentucky thick southern accent and was the most quotable kid i ever met i hate books mr xxxxx they pissed me off my grandma made me sleep on the porch because she cooked some veggies and i told her dang it woman where's the meat i ain't never seen a pencil like this can i keep this and show my dad talking about a regular mechanical pencil they threw me out of golden coral because i ate eight of them stakes they had i was pissed next time i'm trying for nine and we were supposed to have a fire drill at like 1 55 or some odds time at 1 57 he went ahead and pulled it honest to god thinking he would help out whoever forgot last one killed me i had a kid 16 total addict alcoholic meth pills heroin really rough childhood started smoking crack with his dad at 13. stepdad committed suicide in front of him at 14 unimaginable in between he'd come to school high or drunk and we would send him home nice kid always respectful and just had a good soul one day he was all sorts of messed up and i pull him out of class i told him that i loved him and i was worried and if he kept this up he would more than likely be dead by 30 he freaked out and ran to the principal's office and complained that i had just told him that i loved him and cared about him principal said well maybe he loves you and cares about you we kicked him out of school after we had to he got sober he came back to track me down he grabbed me and started sobbing he said when i said i loved him it was the first time an adult had said that to him and he believed it he has stayed sober for years went to college and is doing really well as a nurse now i had a junior 16 years old in my high school science course last year peel a strip of metal off the side of a ruler and proceed to stick each end of it into an outlet and shock himself i saw the sparks out of the corner of my eye and he jumped up and his arm was in some significant pain he said he did it because he wanted to see what would happen scientific method in action i guess i will never forget that dumbass sounds like someone with a curious nature teenagers often end up doing dumb stuff if not given a way to express themselves constructively so it's super important to find them an appropriate outlet aha outlet i'm a speech therapist so i work with the students who have disabilities or special needs one of my students started with me in kindergarten let's call him frankie he had autism and just a tiny bit of language and a lot of behaviors but something about him i absolutely loved he walked like an old man and had a mop of blonde hair i adored him even though a lot of the other staff classified him as a difficult kid he had a difficult home life and unsupportive parents which made his behaviors a lot worse but he never had them with me as he got older he had more outbursts and tantrums but they would always call me over to calm him down when covered it frankie's parents weren't able to get him onto the computer to do remote learning and i left to work at a different school in september so i never got to say goodbye to him i know he's probably doing okay this year but it breaks my heart that i can't be the one to be there for him anymore and i just hope he understands why i'm not there dance instructor student had one hemisphere of her brain removed as an infant and she was paralyzed on one side she said that she wanted to dance because she wanted people to see that she wasn't ashamed of her body after months and months she finally managed one spin around the other instructor cried i cried she cried it was effing incredible at my school we get a lot of refugees from the middle east and south asia i had a student iraqi talk to me about her trip over they fled when as was starting to take over their city her father stayed behind to help others get out they got a notice that he was being held ransom a few days later they paid the ransom and in return was sent an image of his headless body she was an incredibly happy jovial young woman i can't even imagine what kid of pain she must have went through i heard many stories of fleeing war and strife but that one was probably the worst for me this kid jay 10 years old with a learning disability was struggling at home divorce living with grandma and at school it was my first year teaching and he would often lash out to get attention and be purposely annoying to see if he could get a rise out of me pretty soon it became clear that he was just lonely and isolated so he needed a friend after getting to know him for a couple of weeks i was happy to become his friend that year and he and i became so close that he would bend over backwards trying to catch up on work just so he could hang out with me i saw him struggle pretty heavily even with one-on-one support but apart from a couple of moments of crisis he kept his nose to the grindstone and worked hard every day this isn't a movie so he still wasn't the best student in the class but he made so much progress compared to the beginning of the year that every time i even thought about calling out or taking it easy either jay needs me and he did i taught sculpture and mask making at an art summer camp years back one of the projects was drawing a creature and then carving a 3d version of it out of a block of foam to paint and decorate all the students nailed it except one a boy around nine didn't get it i sat with him and went over it many times he didn't understand the concept of three dimensions like what would this side view look like as a top view type thinking after a long while my assistant a woman in her late 30s took me aside and pointed out all the indicators that the kid had fetal alcohol syndrome i had no idea i'll never forget his confused blank face and my frustration at how someone couldn't think in 3d i try to be more understanding sympathetic and patient now joseph i taught read tried to teach joseph science for two years so i wasn't exactly blind to his up limitations but he really did surprise me when we began our unit on the universe we watched a short video about the life of a star and then our leader class discussion and we talked about our sun and how small our solar system is and all of that fun stuff at some point it dawned on joseph that the sun is a star and would go through a life cycle like any other star does and he starts to lose his fine mind it's not much going on up there though so i am not too worried about long-term effects he suddenly has so many questions wait so we're gonna get burned alive how much time do we have how come nobody has said anything about this before and this isn't like when middle schoolers ask dumb questions for attention this kid is a fine grabbing his hair and squirming in his seat totally scared so i go no joseph this isn't going to happen for a lulla long time we won't be here by then which does not help the situation all that poor kid was doing was minding his business and doing the least academically up until now i threw his entire existence in his face accidentally i'm not a monster and he had to take a minute outside in the hall to figure shout after that joseph did not pass the eighth grade that year i had a seventh grader that was the biggest happiest doofus he actually was pretty intelligent but he was such an open book and didn't put much effort into school that he came across as a bit of a fool other teachers treated him like a nuisance because he definitely was a distraction to other kids he didn't try to be disruptive he just was but he lit up the room with positive energy and was genuinely happy to enjoy every moment of being alive i didn't understand how his prior teachers were annoyed by him because he genuinely was a ray of sunshine and he made everyone a little happier by being in his presence he was always smiling always entertained by life and it was contagious kind of like a human golden retriever i helped him learn how to set school-related goals for himself and take more of an interest in the things we studied and he was so proud of them in his first day in my class the reason i will never forget him is because i wasn't yet a mother when i taught him and i decided then that if i ever have kids i hope they will be as happy as oscar is i would try to encourage their sense of wonder and fun above all else i swore you were talking about me until you said he got an a in my class same hahahahaha one of my students told me as a child she wanted to grow up to be a strawberry and then cried when she realized she couldn't because she was a human being very sweet girl a good mate of mine had the following interaction with his daughter while i was chilling in his house daughter when i grow up can i marry a boy dad yep when you're old enough daughter can i marry a girl dad yep when you're old enough daughter can i marry soup dad no daughter runs off crane my mate just looks at me and says in utter confusion she doesn't even like soup the one who told me you really make me think we are friends to this day and have the best conversations it's the highest compliment for a teacher i remember when i got to your class is fun because you teach us how to think the kids were talking about all of their classes and it was sort of a throwaway comment because they were talking mostly about the classes that frustrated them it was 11th grade ib it was the nicest compliment even though he didn't mean it as one i'm a professor and i had a student who was a big dude much older than the typical college student like maybe 40 ex-military and very stoic we did a simulation exercise during class where students had to make a decision about whether to race a car or withdraw from the race most students go forward with the race for a variety of reasons but what they don't know is that this situation mirrors the decision that nasa made with the challenger launch which obviously exploded after the exercise the student came up to me and started crying and said it was the most impactful exercise he's ever done and that when i have hard days i should remember that i made a difference for him i almost started crying myself it was a great moment in my career the good i teach english as a foreign language and had a class of middle school students who needed to use sequential words first next then etc to describe making something as part of their end of book test most students use the example presented in the book on how to make a sandwich some were creative and write about how to make a hamburger instead one boy raised his hand and asked if he could write about a computer game as long as you follow the instructions i don't mind ten minutes later he asked for a blank sheet of paper whereas everyone else answered the question with four or five short sentences this particular student wrote two and a half pages on how to make a house in minecraft creating tools assembling material avoiding enemies etc one of the most impressive things i've seen from students at that level the bad a boy who couldn't seem to keep his hands to himself he would occasionally punch other boys in the arm click girls in the head and eventually i had to deal with one of the other boys in class raising his hand to inform me that this particular student was grabbing his chili pepper chili pepper is a korean euphemism for penis the troublemaker was eventually kicked out but not before his mother came to complain that her son was an angel and i was obviously making everything up the weird a fifth grade girl joined my class and on her very first day after everyone else had left walked up to me and slid a folded up piece of paper across my desk teacher this is my phone number call me anytime i taught math to fifth eighth graders had a student who did very well always pleasant helped others etc i began to think about him more when i noticed a pattern in the clothes he wore the clothes were nice basic and clean so i really just shrugged it off it had just turned into the holiday season that year about a week or so before thanksgiving and one evening i had to run back to the school to pick up my car as i had went out with some fellow instructors as i was preparing to leave i noticed activity near the dumpsters and saw him digging through them pulling out food scraps from the cafeteria my heart sank about 1 000 feet i didn't know what to do if i were to go up to him he'd know i knew and i just didn't know how he would react i talked with a colleague of mine who knew a social worker the family had suffered the loss of his dad about two years ago and now his mom was battling cancer to say they were hanging on by a thread would be an understatement but the kid hid this from everyone as far as we knew finally we knew we had to do something so we all waited one evening and sure enough he returned he was scared ashamed crying angry every emotion you can think of i do not blame him we took him to his home and his mom was emotional too we ordered hot food and a colleague went and got it and we all spent many hours that evening talking and reassuring them we were there to help working with local resources we got them the help they needed food medical assistance even local volunteers to come help with some chores around their house the mom got better thankfully and the bright young man continued to do well in school and got a scholarship for college when he graduated a few years later this was 20 years ago today that bright young man works as a mechanical engineer and is still as generous and considerate as ever his mother sadly passed on around 10 years ago all three of his former teachers from that night went to the funeral i am very proud of him we still keep in touch and visit often so many madison who had a beautiful smile a few years after graduation she was murdered by her boyfriend a classmate of hers this shattered me tony who had a dd and i seated right in front of me he made me crazy and charmed his way into my heart both at the same time he liked my class but not science and that was fine travis who was a nice kid in school but is now a real leader in his community stephanie who pursued a career in chemistry and said it was because i inspired her sarah who called me the night she was suicidal she's now one semester for being a social worker dustin from my first year who was living on his own and needed lunch money half the time he's a dad and husband now and doing great hayley who put a ton of pressure on herself and was in tears in my class after school a couple conversations with her dad later and i think maybe a family crisis was averted she's with the peace corps now bill who did as much as needed to make a c in my class and no more who has a phd in mathematics and is a data scientist he was bored m whose name is distinct so i'm only using his initial blew off school from january to march for unknown reasons kicked it into high deer for the last quarter and final but still ended with a 59 f it cost me nothing to nudge that to a 60 so he could have the credit and graduate he knew and thanked me kids doing well now justin who had a major falling out with the journalism teacher and couldn't get anybody to listen to his side of things he teared for me during that double period after dropping her class he's a dad and successful reporter super nice guy it's not that these are any more or less remarkable than anyone else we just forged a relationship and i'm so grateful to have shared a small bit of their lives the thing i miss most about being in the classroom is the kids not a teacher but in my fifth grade math class when my teacher called my name on the first day of school she paused lowered her glasses and asked are you my uncle's name s son i said no and she gave a huge sigh of relief and said oh thank god this was over 20 years after she had my uncle as a student i told my dad about that later that day and he laughed and said my uncle was quite a terror in elementary school i will never forget michael he came from a different country at the age of two it took him months to open up to me but i was patient with him and it paid off we had an unbreakable bond we would do our projects together we would play i learned his native language so i could better communicate with him he opened a new level of love and joy into my life i was a water sports instructor teaching people kayaking and canoeing a couple years back there was a group of refugees all miners between 11 and 17 that came to us through a charity that was supporting them gaining asylum in my country uk all of them had crossed the channel honor after dingy literally two days before and for some goddamn reason the charity had decided it was a good time to take them canoeing can't make this sharp there was this one kid from south sudan 15 years old and an absolute behemoth we're talking six foot plus and pushing 14-15 stone in weight covered in scars some of them ritualistic scarification missing teeth and generally just looking like he'd been through hell many times he was terrified of the water i took him in my boat nice and easy then once he got comfortable i just stuck a stern rudder in and let him power us through the water him and the other kids loved it we had some tears at the beginning i imagine there was a lot of ptsd involved judging by the state of some of these poor kids at the end of the session this giant monster of a child walked up to me with a huge jagged grin said in broken english thank you leader and gave me a bear hug i'll never forget to this day four years later i still remember that grin for those out of the uk 14-15 stone is 89-95 kilograms in normal units 196-210 pounds in freedom units and 418-440 big macs in murrican i've had many students that are still taking a large place in my heart some are sad like the girl whose mother started beating her during a parent conference i started crying and begged the mother to stop the student who had no water or electricity at home but we allowed him to shower at school and we washed his clothes the student who watched his grandparents get murdered by his mother and wrote about it in an essay for my class the student who had never been in a lake that we took camping he was so excited but didn't know how to swim so he just stood in the water up to his neck and grinned lovely the girl with terrible anxiety that i sat with four hours after school to work on school work not because she wasn't smart but because she was so anxious about not being perfect the girl who was mauled by a dog which messed up her face but she always smiled the girl whose father brought her to school every day late who finally broke down and told me her father was raping her every day when the mother left to go to work the vietnamese and cambodian refugees who flooded my school after the war one wrote an essay about running towards a boat and seeing his grandfather get shot but he had to keep running the brazilian boy who got up in class and got me to start dancing with him while we all laugh joyfully the group of students i took outside during their first snowstorm the wonder on their faces was priceless the student who found me on facebook after 20 years to tell me i made a difference in her life she came to my state and took me to dinner and told me i was there for her when her home life was terrible i had no idea i'm just kind to everyone i have a million more stories i have loved every student and being able to teach has been an honor you need to write a book and title it something like the things they don't tell you about when you're a teacher [Music] you

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Length: 25min 5sec (1505 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 20 2020