Deep Hurts
Well, this week was a crazy one. This last Monday, I started teaching 10 more hours each week. My school just started a program to prepare high school graduates to study abroad. I’ve been teaching the grammar end of it, and it has been keeping me busy.
Tuesday morning I went to the office to review my lesson plans before class. One of the other foreign teachers saw me and told me something very interesting. He told me there was a crowd of people at the gate of my school. I had no idea what it was for so, I called a friend who works at the school, and I was told that one of the students had died. It seems a few weeks ago they went on a class trip in a forest preserve. At the end of the day, all of the students went back to the busses, but one was missing. The teachers looked everywhere imaginable, and could not find him. So they called the police and professional rescue personnel to look for him. They did not find him until almost twelve days later. It seems he was climbing and had fallen to his death. No one really knows why he left the group and ventured so far out. Authorities estimate that he died five days after he went missing, and was dead for a week when they found him.
I found out it was one of my students. I knew him, which is to say, I knew of him. I have 788 students that I teach this year, and it is easy for some of them to disappear into the faces when I only see them every other week. I feel so sad for him and his family.
I’ve also received several e-mails from students expressing their grief and asking for advice about how to cope. It has been such a difficult time for them. There is a lot of healing that needs to take place. Please keep the school, the students, and this boy’s family in your hearts and thoughts.
“He who has gone, so we but cherish his memory, abides with us, more potent, nay, more present than the living man.”
-Antoine de Saint Éxupéry
Tuesday morning I went to the office to review my lesson plans before class. One of the other foreign teachers saw me and told me something very interesting. He told me there was a crowd of people at the gate of my school. I had no idea what it was for so, I called a friend who works at the school, and I was told that one of the students had died. It seems a few weeks ago they went on a class trip in a forest preserve. At the end of the day, all of the students went back to the busses, but one was missing. The teachers looked everywhere imaginable, and could not find him. So they called the police and professional rescue personnel to look for him. They did not find him until almost twelve days later. It seems he was climbing and had fallen to his death. No one really knows why he left the group and ventured so far out. Authorities estimate that he died five days after he went missing, and was dead for a week when they found him.
I found out it was one of my students. I knew him, which is to say, I knew of him. I have 788 students that I teach this year, and it is easy for some of them to disappear into the faces when I only see them every other week. I feel so sad for him and his family.
I’ve also received several e-mails from students expressing their grief and asking for advice about how to cope. It has been such a difficult time for them. There is a lot of healing that needs to take place. Please keep the school, the students, and this boy’s family in your hearts and thoughts.
“He who has gone, so we but cherish his memory, abides with us, more potent, nay, more present than the living man.”
-Antoine de Saint Éxupéry
Comments
How sad. We never know when our souls will be required. That really shows how important it is to spread the fire.