There are burdens that come with being a career educator. You carry a lot of kids with you. Not literally, of course. Although after enough years in education, your back probably hurts enough that it feels like you have.
You carry their stories. Their struggles. Their successes. Their bad decisions. The ones you worried about. The ones who made you laugh. The ones who made you question every life decision that eventually led to you standing in front of them at 8:03 on a Tuesday morning wondering why nobody had warned you about this particular part of the job.
And then they leave.
That’s the strange part of this profession. You spend years watching kids grow up, trying to teach them something—sometimes academics, sometimes responsibility, sometimes simply how not to make their current bad decision considerably worse—and then one day, they’re gone. They graduate. They move away. Life happens. And you don’t always get to know how the story turns out.
But sometimes they come back.
They’re adults now. Well…older, anyway. Some of them never quite get around to the whole “grown-up” thing. To be fair, I’m not entirely convinced all of us educators have either. They’ve matured. Some more than others.
They have jobs, families, responsibilities, mortgages, car payments, and kids of their own. And occasionally you get to witness one of life’s great little gifts to educators: a former student telling you, with complete exasperation, about something their kid did.
You listen sympathetically, of course. But somewhere deep inside, a tiny voice is whispering, Oh, this is beautiful.
And every once in a while, one of them says thank you. Sometimes they remember something you said to them twenty years ago that you don’t remember saying at all.
“I always remembered when you told me…”
And you’re standing there thinking, I said that? Damn. That was pretty good.
But they remembered.
Maybe at the time they rolled their eyes. Maybe they thought you were giving them another lecture. Maybe they walked away muttering something under their breath that was probably best you didn’t hear. Actually, after enough years in education, you probably heard it. You just developed the professional wisdom to occasionally pretend you didn’t.
But the words stayed somewhere. And ten or fifteen or twenty years later, life finally provided the translation. They understood what you meant.
Those moments are one of the quiet rewards of spending a career in education. You don’t get many of them. There are no ceremonies for them. No certificates. Nobody sends an email announcing that something you said in 2007 finally made sense to somebody. A former student just walks up to you somewhere and says hello. And occasionally, they ask you a question you weren’t expecting.
That happened to me not too long ago. I ran into a former student while I was out and about.
Handsome kid. Still is. Slightly taller now, and not quite the scrawny teenager I remembered from years ago. He wasn’t the worst kid I ever dealt with. Let’s just say he had himself a little reputation. And a discipline record that, if printed, probably contributed to the deforestation of a small but measurable portion of North America. Mostly minor stuff. And a few…“other” incidents.
Suffice it to say, this kid was a handful when he was in school. And by “handful,” I mean the kind of student who could make you reconsider your career choice before lunch and then somehow have you laughing about something by the end of the day.
He walked up to me, shook my hand, said hello, and asked how I was doing. Then he hesitated.
“Mr. Velez, do you remember me?”
“Hey! Yes, I remember you.”
Now, in the interest of full disclosure, his name had momentarily escaped me. The face hadn’t. You don’t forget those faces. Especially the faces of the kids who tested every limit, explored boundaries nobody knew needed exploring, and occasionally made you sit alone in your office wondering exactly why you were still in education. The names may occasionally get filed away in some dusty corner of the brain. But the faces? Those stay.
“Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure. Go ahead.”
He looked at me. “Why did you hate me so much at school?”
I smiled. That seemed to catch him completely off guard.
“Why are you smiling?”
“Because I didn’t hate you. I never hated you. Still don’t.”
Then I told him something I’m not sure he expected to hear.
“I hated the person you were when you were younger sometimes. I hated some of the choices you made. I hated some of the things you did. You could drive me absolutely bat-shit crazy. But I never hated you.
“I’ve done nothing but wish you well since you left here. I’ve hoped things worked out for you. I’ve hoped you matured. I’ve hoped you grew. And I’ve hoped you became a better man than the kid I knew back then.”
We talked for a few minutes. We recalled a few of his misadventures—which, with the benefit of time and the knowledge that everyone survived them, are considerably funnier now than they were when the paperwork was involved. He told me a little about what he’s doing now. Then we shook hands again. I wished him well, and we went our separate ways.
He left smiling. A real smile. Not the teenage smile that usually meant somebody knew something you didn’t and you were probably going to find out about it shortly. This was different. It was the kind of smile a kid gets when he finally gets the toy he wanted. Or when something special happens. A genuinely happy smile.
I smiled back.
And that little encounter has stuck with me. It got me thinking about my journey as a teacher, and now as an administrator. About the impact we educators can have on young and impressionable minds.
And it made me think about my experiences with this particular kid.
I even wondered whether there were times when I overstepped. Whether my frustration showed more than I intended. Whether, in trying to hold him accountable, I ever failed to make clear the other half of the message: I still care what happens to you.
Because somewhere along the way, that kid had convinced himself that I hated him.
Maybe because I corrected him.
A lot.
Maybe because I held him accountable.
Daily.
Maybe because I didn’t let him get away with things.
Never.
Maybe because there were days when he saw my frustration but couldn’t yet understand what was underneath it.
Kids don’t always know the difference. Sometimes they interpret accountability as anger. They interpret boundaries as dislike. They interpret the adult who refuses to give up on them as the adult who’s always “on their case.”
And sometimes it takes years before they understand.
There’s a lesson in that for us adults, too. We can dislike a kid’s behavior without disliking the kid. We can be disappointed in their choices without being disappointed in them. We can correct them. Discipline them. Hold the line when they desperately want us to move it. And we can still hope like hell that someday they prove us wrong about every fear we ever had for them.
Maybe that’s part of the burden of this profession. We meet them in the middle of their story. We don’t know how it ends.
The angry kid may become a gentle father. The irresponsible kid may become the person everyone depends on. The kid who couldn’t turn in an assignment on time to save his life may someday have employees of his own—presumably wondering why nobody can meet a deadline. And that kid sitting in your office for the fourth time this week? He isn’t necessarily the man who’s going to walk up and shake your hand twenty years from now.
Because the kid standing in front of you today isn’t necessarily the adult they’re going to become. Some of them take the scenic route. Some take a few wrong turns. Some apparently drive straight through the guardrail, abandon the vehicle, and continue the journey on foot.
But they’re still growing. We just don’t always get to see where they end up.
That’s one of the burdens of being an educator.
But every once in a while, one of them comes back. A little taller. A little older. Hopefully a little wiser. And for just a few minutes, you get to see the kid you remember and the adult they became standing in the same person.
Maybe they say thank you. Maybe they tell you something you said all those years ago finally made sense. Or maybe they just shake your hand and ask you a question they’ve apparently been carrying around for years.
And suddenly you get to read another page of a story you thought you’d finished long ago.
I think that’s one of the quiet rewards of a career in education.
Sometimes, they come back.
And sometimes, you find out it mattered.
There’s more waiting at https://xinkblotz.com.
Telling stories, sharing thoughts, and drinking coffee. A blend of fiction, reflection, and whatever’s brewing—one post at a time.
Stories have always traveled best by word of mouth. If one of these finds a place in your heart, I’d be honored if you’d drop a like or share it with someone else.
© 2026 Mariano Velez ~ InkBlotz Press
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