Tragedy Illuminates the Complexity of a Teacher’s Work
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 4th and 7th 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
