A True Hero

I have known some exemplary teachers in my time. I know public education can get a bad rap, but if you knew the teachers I know, you wouldn't hesitate to entrust them with your precious children. There is one in particular I have been thinking about a lot today, as I've worked on a video of her students to give to her tomorrow.

I remember the first day I met Roberta, or "Miss J." as she is known throughout my school. Before school started, in August of last year, my new first grade team was meeting to go over a few things. Roberta blew through the door in a flurry of activity. She was fun, animated, outgoing, friendly, and kind of outrageous - I loved her instantly. What has stuck with me most is something she said as we discussed ways to meet the needs of our ELL students. One suggestion was having all of them go to one teacher at a certain time each day. She was not fond of the idea. She emphatically stated that she "prayed each one of her students into her class" and they were hers! I watched throughout the school year as she fiercely loved each one of those kids and proved this statement time and again.

Roberta's classroom was right next to mine, and she instantly took me under her wing.

Having taught for 20 + years, she had boxes of files and ideas to share. It was not unusual for her to jet into my classroom for a minute during the day to give me a few "extra" copies of activities or hand me a candybar from her stash "just because". She would pop over sometimes and tell my students how much she loved me, or come in to give my students hugs and tease them. She made learning fun - for instance, on St. Patrick's Day, she brought her class over to my room along with some "magic potion" the leprechauns had left overnight (pistachio pudding mix). The students all got a little in a cup and we added milk. They stirred it and -voila!- green potion!

She would give spontaneous hugs and the love just spilled out of her onto whoever was near. She told me the day they said she couldn't hug her students was the day she would quit teaching.

In April, the week after we returned from Spring Break, I noticed that she hadn't shown up to work when the first bell rang. Now, since she was notoriously late (although never that late), I didn't get overly worried - I just brought her students into my classroom to read for awhile. But then 5 minutes went by, then 10, and no Miss J. I called her home and cell phones and got voice mail. So I called the office who began to track her down. The secretary came to my room about a half hour later to tell me that Roberta had been in a car accident on the way to work. It didn't seem too serious, as she was conscious (the first thing she said was "how are my students?") and at the nearby Timpanogos Hospital. A sub was called and things got back to a relatively normal state.

Then, at lunchtime, my principal and the secretary went to visit her and found out that she had been life-flighted to a Salt Lake hospital with internal injuries and at least a crushed pelvis bone. We all began to worry for real.

I kept thinking about how things can change drastically in just a moment. It was touch-and-go for awhile there. Roberta is recovering still from her injuries. A long-term substitute was found for her class who was an wonderful, positive, hard-working woman. My team leader, also an amazing teacher and woman, spent hours packing and organizing Roberta's many belongings so that they could be moved to her home (she will be teaching next year, we hope, but in another classroom and grade.) My team worked together to give Miss J.'s students the official end-of-year reading test, and many of the faculty helped any way they could.

I missed my friend every day those last few weeks of school, as I got to work and noted the absence of her blue SUV. I missed her when I unlocked my classroom door in the morning and when something happened during the day that I wanted to share with her. She is one of my heroes and truly influenced my life for the better throughout this school year.