One day she was a Columbus 10th grader. The next week she was a grieving mom.

When I cease to learn something from this profession, somebody gently guide me toward a rocking chair on a front porch somewhere and leave me there with a glass of lemonade and some shortbread cookies. I’ll know it’s time to move on when being a teacher no longer teaches me.

Being a teacher is just the catalyst, the opportunity to be in the right spot at the right time to be taught some truly life-altering, life-enhancing lessons. Every teacher has a collection of experiences that mold and make us not into better teachers, but better people.

One of mine was a funeral.

She was one of my students. A teenage momma who gave birth to a beautiful baby girl, born into perpetuated poverty – a generational curse of less than. Barely able to clothe and feed herself, my student brought this little girl into a world that, by my standards, was lacking. I confess, I passed a little judgment.

Two weeks after her birth, my student’s little girl stopped breathing.

With no resources of their own, the family was offered charitable funeral arrangements, and I attended with a heavy heart. When I walked into the chapel, I was met with resounding sobs of grief that immediately brought me to my knees. There were no elaborate flowers. No soft music playing. No formalities. Not even a well-spoken preacher who knew the little girl’s name. Just an infant in a rudimentary casket and a broken hearted young momma. I sat in conviction.

Only weeks prior, I knew her to be a 10th grader working her way through Julius Caesar. Now she was a grieving momma working her way through grief. A teenager with no winter coat in her closet, now burying her daughter in the cold ground of a potter’s field.

In this profession, I have seen a great deal. All teachers have. When you work with hundreds of kids during a teaching career, there are guaranteed times of incredulity. To watch and feel and experience even a glimpse of what these children go through is astonishing. Moments of triumph will inspire. Times of desperation will motivate. And glimpses into desolation will refine.

The cries of that grief-stricken young mother refined my every notion of what a student is. More than a warm body in a desk. More than a messy essay. More than a face in the hallway. The plastic box holding the heart and soul of that teenage girl refined my every notion of a proper funeral. More than flowers over an ornate casket. More than a lovely song and an eloquent message of remembrance.

She became a testament to every child sitting in the desks of a classroom. A symbol for the countless abused and neglected and hungry, but very real, kids who are struggling through very adult situations. Her little girl’s funeral became a metaphor for the misconceptions we as a society often have toward the ones who lack — lack intelligence, lack good looks, lack finances, lack manners, lack skill, etc.

I learned a valuable lesson through attending the funeral of my student’s little girl. Loss has no age requirement, no financial status, no racial or gender bias. Grief is boundless. It creates common ground and reveals the humanity within us all.

Being that young mother’s teacher got me in the door of that chapel, and for the lesson that resulted, I am forever grateful.

This story was originally published July 9, 2018 at 12:47 PM.