A Hard Day

Today was one of my most challenging days to teach--and it wasn't because my lesson got throw off or the kids were unreceptive. My master teacher, who had been battling cancer for the last eight months or so lost his battle on Saturday.
It wasn't sudden, we knew the prognosis was grim and that his time was coming--but no one expected it to be this quick. In the end, the quickness was probably a blessing for him.
It doesn't erase the fact that it was a grim thing for the entire school to hear. Especially not when I found out twenty minutes before I had to face a room full of 30 of his former students.
I didn't want to write this as some sob story, because this man would not have wanted anyone to get that way. He was the single most positive person I have ever met. I want to write this because today's experience opened my eyes to all the reasons teaching is awesome that I might have been starting to forget. That is, what it really means to be a teacher.
I just had my students write when they first got into class. I didn't tell them what to write or even that it had to be about their feelings. I think we just all needed a moment. Of course most of them did write about it, and they asked me to read it as I came walking around.
Not a single one of them wrote about a book he taught them, or a writing strategy, or even a specific lesson. As these students were collecting and recording their memories, they were filled with experiences and stories they had heard from him. Times he let them just talk. Times he had talked about surfing, his funny stories about his wife. His weird clock that always chirps. The big I CAN painted on his classroom walls. These little pieces that were not English at all. They were just him. And the students loved him for it, grew because they felt they had someone to trust, and mourned today because they felt scared that they had lost that. At least, that's what they wrote. I was overwhelmed by how many students were less shaken from his death (again, we knew he was sick) and more by (as so many of their free writes said) the fact that they had never lost a teacher before, and what a strange feeling it was.
As I was leaving today, I noticed that they had put up a big piece of butcher paper on one of the walls, and that even at lunch time, students were swarming the paper to write anything. Memories, stories, or just "The best teacher ever." It was truly a sight to see.
I have my own memories and lessons to take away from my brief time with him. I am going to keep my chin up, and press on. I wanted to take a minute to share his story here, because I keep thinking of what Taco Fighter brought up in a recent blog post. "It is true that you teach your students yourself"
There was a man that did just that, and did it well.