They say your senior year of high school is the best, the one with the most memories. I did make memories, but they weren’t all great. I remember it all so clearly. Two years ago I was at my friend’s house studying for some test when we all got the news: our chemistry teacher had been in a car accident. We prayed, and assumed she would recover, but two days passed, and our hearts were broken. I was in my history class when our principal came and broke the news to our teacher, and her terrible shriek was all that we needed to know that Mrs. Amy was gone. I still don’t understand how something this awful could happen to someone so wonderful.

She was an inspiration

“Be confident in your answer. Be confident in yourself,” is just one of the many phrases that she inspired her students with. She would usually venture away from her chemistry lessons and wind up giving us life lessons instead.

She knew how to have fun.

I know as a junior, I was not looking forward to taking chemistry, but Mrs. Amy made it fun. Her lessons were interactive, creative, and made learning so much easier. She would set aside days to have experiments, even if we were running behind schedule. She’d call significant figures “sig figs,” and she got way too much joy out of that. She set aside a day for Avogadro’s Number, and had us create stuffed moles with themes. I still remember how much of a kick she would get out of watching the silly things we created, like the Powerpuff Moles or Moley Cyrus.

She cared more about others than she did herself.

At my school, we did this event called Cajun Christmas, where students would volunteer to give elementary kids a fun Christmas that their families maybe couldn’t afford. We would put on a hay ride, decorate cookies, read Christmas books, and we even gave them presents. It was one of my favorite activities from high school, and it was definitely Mrs. Amy’s favorite too. Watching her interact with the kids just showed how big of a heart she really had. Even after she died, she donated her organs. That just goes to show how much of a giver she was.

She was more than just a teacher.

The way she impacted her students’ lives is actually kind of crazy. I never would’ve imagined myself crying in my bed at 2 am because my teacher wasn’t coming back to school the next day, but that’s exactly what I did when I found out about her accident. She was a mom outside of school, but even inside of school she acted as a mom to everyone else. She was there for her students in ways she didn’t have to be. She went above and beyond. When my older sister got pregnant in high school and had morning sickness during her class, she didn’t just send her to the bathroom or to the office. She stood with her and held her hair back as if she was her best friend.

She cared for her students more than she had to.

She would talk to students after class, at Walmart, or at the football games. She wouldn’t just make the basic small talk either because she actually wanted to know about our lives. She wanted to know if we were getting enough sleep, if we were happy in our relationships, or if we were stressing too much. She tried her best to make sure she was involved in her student's lives.

Mrs. Amy was one of the sweetest people I have ever known, and teachers like her are the reasons why I want to be a teacher. I hope that I can affect my student’s lives in the same way that she affected mine.