City School Stories

Teacher Stories

Submitted by Angela Chan on October 4, 2011

There is so much about teaching that is intellectually challenging and emotionally taxing, but I found myself experiencing the deepest kind of pain I’d ever known just a few days before school was to start.  We had lost two students whose lives, according to news sources, were ended by their own mother.

Sam, 8 and Samantha, 12, were about to enter the 4^th and 7^th grades respectively.  I had taught Sam in the Extended-Day program the year before.  I was a third grade teacher, and Sam was in the other third grade class.  However, when my grade partner, Sam’s teacher, suddenly passed away, I had considered Sam and his class to be my own.

I saw the headline in the news the day before school started, but I ignored it at first.  Headlines about domestic violence and family tragedies have become something not out of the ordinary in our society. What is one more such case in our city?  Why care enough to spend time to find out the story?  Then came an email from a colleague telling me it might be students from our school.  My heart raced as I opened the story to read its content, but since the names of the children were left out, I couldn’t know for sure.  The circumstances around the deaths of the children were tragic, and I went to bed hoping that they were not children from my school.

The next morning our principal opened the school year for staff by gently breaking to us the news.  Just days before students were to start school, we had to process this news, grieve, and be ready to meet the new school year and our 500 students.

There is no doubt that Sam and Samantha’s deaths are the most difficult experience of my teaching career.  More than ever before, as we experience the pain of loss, it is clear that the lives of students are inextricably intertwined with our personal lives.  Throughout the school year, teachers’ personal lives bear the emotional pain of our students, and the children’s life burdens become our own.  By the same token, the children’s success brings genuine joy to our own lives.  As teachers, we do not leave our thoughts about our students at the classroom door as we head back to our own homes.  So often our professional and personal lives intersect and the fine line in between blurs.

So what does losing two students mean to a teacher?  As expected, there is the self-questioning of what I, or we as a school, could’ve done, what we missed, and how we need to do better for all our students.  There is the recognition that guilt is not productive nor is it necessary in this situation, yet there is no escaping the feeling that I had failed to protect two young lives. Often teachers go beyond the call of duty to educate; we also step up and take responsibility for every other aspect of our students’ lives.  One of the trickiest parts of teaching is to free myself from the debilitating effects of blame and guilt, but at the same time to take responsibility for giving my students the best I have to give so that they can thrive.  At the loss of these two children, the fragility of life illuminates what a grave responsibility we have.  Reflecting on this responsibility is frightening, yet as the school year begins, I still make a conscious decision to recommit myself to this work.

I hope this experience helps me to become a better teacher.  I think back to how I ignored the headline in the news and thought that it’s just another family tragedy, and how easy it was to consider it another statistic.  Sometimes it feels that many in our community see our children as statistics, numbers, or test scores, and not as real people.  Sometimes the pressure put on us causes me to become a teacher who sees our children like they do, and to create learning experiences that value test scores more than the humanity of the children.  I hope the loss of Sam and Samantha sets my heart right and helps me to be present to my students in a way that values the preciousness of their lives.

Although the sadness will linger on, the healing process has already begun as I put myself into the work of caring for a new group of students.  Children are so full of life, and it is when I am engaged in creating community with them that I am touched by their lives.  Sam and Samantha had touched all our lives as well.  I celebrate what wonderful children they were, and I dedicate this school year to them.