It is very rare that former students come to visit me. Most people do not remember their freshman/sophomore math teacher fondly.
I recently had a student come back and visit. When she was in my class she skipped regularly, slept most of the time she was in class, and occasionally got into fights outside of class. She told me that she had transferred to an alternative school at the beginning of the semester and that she had just graduated. This meant that she was going to school from 7:30 am to 5:30 pm every day for four straight months.
She also said that she hung out with some of her old friends a couple weeks ago for the first time since leaving my school, and realized that if she had continued to hang out with those old friends then she would have dropped out of school. Now she is clean, sober, and getting ready to start community college. The most significant part of the conversation was not that she managed to graduate on time (an incredibly impressive feat), but that she realized that she was better off not being around her old friends.
This is probably the single most mature thing I have ever heard from a student.
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