As a sophomore in college, I often think back to high school and reminisce about all the time I spent in school and with my friends and classmates. My last article is a good example of that. I'm not one of those people who say that high school was horrible and that I'd never go back if I had the chance. While I'd never go back to high school, I will go back to see my teachers. They're the ones who made high school easier for me and they made such a positive impact on my life. The teacher who had the best impact on me was my German teacher. Frau Griffin translates into Ms. Griffin and maybe now that I'm graduated I should just call her by her first name or even just Ms Griffin but nothing sounds right after calling her Frau for nearly six years.
Frau is the kind of teacher that every kid hopes to have in their life and I was lucky enough to have had her in high school, when life suddenly gets harder and you're faced with you ever ominous future. Even though she's a German teacher, she always took care of her students and gave us what my AP/German 4 class called 'Life Lessons.' Most every class would have a good 10-20 minute break where Frau would give us a little lecture on any given specific topic. I'm not sure how many kids the lessons reached, but they all kept with me. Frau never let class get boring either. She, herself, is an extraordinary person and she always brought it into class. There was rarely a dull moment and sometimes it was the students that gave to that. We had quite a few characters in our classes.
But Frau's Life Lessons weren't the only way that Frau helped me through high school. I started spiraling into a depression freshmen year and sophomore year, it got worse. I recall once, Frau pulled me aside after missing quite a few homework assignments and she helped me figure out that I was in a bad place. I can still remember what I was wearing that day, too. Frau always wanted - and probably still does want- to know that her students are safe and healthy and she always made that very obvious.
Then she helped me with the lowest point in my life. A few days after my birthday, I woke up, convinced my mother to leave me home because I was in a sour mood, and then I tried to kill myself with three kitchen knives. When none of them would cut me, I went back to bed and texted my best friend at the time and told her that I 'think' I had tried to kill myself. She showed Frau and Frau called the Student Resource Officer at my high school and then the police. The police showed up at my house and took me to the hospital and I began to get the help I didn't know that I needed.
Frau won Teacher of the Year last year, a well deserved award for someone who went above and beyond the call of duty while being a teacher at a not so great public school. She proved that anyone can do anything, as cliche as it might sound. She encouraged students and still encourages current students and alumni to do what she knew that we were capable of. Even now, as I go and see her before she jet-sets to the next city to learn and teach more about teaching, she still wants me to do everything she knows I can do. I'm so thankful that I got to know her and that she would never stop caring about me, or any of her alumni.
