Retired teacher: ‘It was always about my students’
“During my 31 years teaching, it was always about my students. I loved my students.
“If they asked for advice, I gave it. I told them, ‘I’ll never lie to you. I’ll never expect you to do something that I wouldn’t do. If you have an issue, and I feel you’re right, I’ll go to the wall for you.’
“In a lot of ways, I was like a second mama to some of them. One student didn’t come from a really great household, so I was her safe space. I told her — and this is what I told all my kids — ‘Dream big, work hard, and you can accomplish anything.’ And she did. She’s married. She’s a successful elementary school teacher in Florida. And she wrote a book that’s on Amazon.
“I always made sure that I was available for the underdog. I had a student who was in special ed and was a football player. He had an opportunity to go to University of Houston, but a counselor told him, ‘You don’t need to go there. You won’t graduate anyway.’ When he told me that, it broke my heart. I looked at him and said, ‘OK, now is the time to prove her wrong.’ He graduated from high school, played football and graduated from U of H, and now he’s a patient liaison at UTMB. This was a kid that a counselor gave up on.
“There are a lot of kids out there who just need somebody to say, ‘Hey, I believe in you. You can do this.’
“When they’re preparing you to be a teacher, they don’t account for so many important aspects of the job. Like being in a classroom with 25-30 children, and figuring out what each individual need is. How you can work with a child who may be dyslexic, or from a broken home, or have a mom or daddy who just died. The compassion aspect is something that has to evolve.
“I always told my students, ‘If you make a bad decision, it does not define your life. Only you can do that. You can look at that decision and grow from it, or get bitter from it.’ I said, ‘You need to grow.’ I’m proud to say that so many of my students through the years grew from it.”
— Melanie Rayner
She taught government, economics, U.S. history, world history and world geography in three school districts, including 19 years at Lee High School.
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