As a teacher, you hope to make an impact on students. With any luck at all, that’s achieved in a positive way. The thing no one prepares you for in graduate school, when you learn how to be a teacher, is how your students will inevitably leave an indelible impact on you.

My path to becoming a full-time teacher has been rather circuitous. After finishing grad school, I actually worked for years in the disability service field as a service coordinator. A few years into that career, I was lucky enough to stumble into a position with my synagogue as their seventh grade teacher for Sunday school, and I figured that would be the only way I could feed my passion for education. (I am very grateful that this turned out not to be the case, in the end; I teach full-time now.) I leaned into it hard, even though at times I felt like I didn’t quite know what I was doing, but I suspect that’s not out of the ordinary for new teachers. I had a class of fifteen raucous twelve-year-olds who, much to my surprise (partly because I was warned about them ahead of time), actively engaged in the subject matter with me every step of the way. That was no small feat – the topics at hand were Antisemitism and the Holocaust. They collectively rose to the occasion.

The cool thing about Sunday school is that, at least at our synagogue, it doesn’t have to end at seventh grade. Students in eighth through twelfth grades can stay on as teaching assistants (madrichim in Hebrew) to support teachers in facilitating classes and activities. They often do so, because not only do they love connecting Jewishly and spending time with each other and the younger students (and maybe us teachers too!), they also get incentives like volunteer hours or a small stipend. Anyway, four of my original seventh graders continued to be part of Sunday school as madrichim; a fifth one actually came back this spring for a little while too. Over the last six years of Sunday school, from when they were my students through their participation as madrichim – and, on Tuesday evenings over those years when I’ve also taught classes in the Jewish community high school program that they also attended – I have developed a strong bond with these particular students, now seniors who are on the brink of graduating from high school and going off into the beyond.

This Sunday was our last day of Sunday school for this school year, their last day of Sunday school ever. Tonight was their last night of the Tuesday night school ever. Tonight, I dashed over to give them gifts I’d forgotten to give them on Sunday – a handwritten personal note for each of them, and a copy of Maus I by Art Spiegelman. They were excited to see me, greeting me with cheers and calls of gratitude and hugs and asking for pictures. That stunned me a bit, in a very heartwarming way. I almost felt like a little celebrity for a minute there!

It snuck up on me, this week. I never thought it would happen to me, but it did. I had my Mr. Feeny moment with these kids. In the series finale of the television show Boy Meets World, the main characters all gather in a classroom with Mr. Feeny, their beloved teacher who has followed them through junior high school, high school, and then college which they just graduated from. They demand that he tell them he loves them, which he refuses to do. They all say tearful goodbyes and leave, and the last scene shows Mr. Feeny alone in the classroom, where he says to no one in particular, “I love you all. Class dismissed.”

Over the years, I have put so much focus into leaving the right kind of impact on these students. I am only now realizing the impact that this class – my very first class – has left on me. They taught me that I can do it. They made me believe in myself. That’s the first gift a new teacher needs, which only students can give, and in the end, it’s the only one that matters.

So, here I sit, trying not to weep as I write this blog post and think about the incredible growth I’ve been privileged to bear witness to in these bright young people. I know that they will make an amazing difference in this world, because they’ve already made all the difference in the world, for me.

To quote Mr. Feeny one last time, for my dear seniors: “Dream. Try. Do good.”

And remember…a few blue jolly ranchers can’t hurt!