19 Positive Teacher Stories That Are So Wholesome

6.

“I had a student move to the country two days before school started, knowing absolutely zero English. It was the fall of 2020, so we knew the world had been turned upside down. Now, my student had been pulled from her home country and put into a school with social distancing, masking, and hybrid learning. She had an extremely difficult time with this transition.”

“One day, my co-teacher was teaching over the computer, and it was my day to have a small group in person at school. I saw our student understandably struggling, so I grabbed my computer, pulled a desk next to hers (a major no-no at that time), and pulled up Google Translate. 

I began typing what I wanted to say to her (completely unrelated to the lesson happening in the background) and showed her that it could speak to it in Spanish, then she could type in the other box, and I could hear or read it in English. 

It took a bit for her to catch on, but once she did, her entire face lit up! It didn’t even occur to me that we shouldn’t be sitting that close to each other or sharing a keyboard; I just knew that I had thought of a way to help connect with her and help her feel more comfortable and understood.

Her mother later told me that she came home crying from excitement because I had found a way to talk with her.

COVID was HARD, and teaching through all of it was even harder. But out of all my years of teaching and amazing memorable moments, the look on her face when I found a way to communicate with her has to be the moment that melts my heart the most.”

—jessicawerner