The Student

Being a teacher was not my first choice for a career. After college, I struggled to find the career I wanted. My whole life I wanted to be a writer. I was starting to find out just how difficult starting a career as a writer really was. So, after weighing my options, I decided to put writing on the back burner and pursue a career in education.

I got my first teaching job at an elementary school in a small town in the country. They offered me the position right when I applied. The school had been desperate for teachers because it was such a small town and not many people lived there. They hired me as a second grade language arts teacher.

On the first day of school, I was nervous to start off my first school year on the right foot. I was relieved to find that most of the children in my class were well mannered and respectful. Of course, there were a few misbehaved students, but that is typical of any class.

There was a total of twenty-six students in my class on the first day of school. I counted twenty-six, but the class roster they had given me said there were twenty-five. The student who was not on my roster was a little girl named Etta. She was a shy little girl. She never said a word. All the other children in the class would never talk to her or even look at her.

I told the secretary that Etta was not on my roster, and she said she would get the roster updated. As the weeks went by, Etta was rarely at school. She would only show up every three or four days. Sometimes I would see her in the morning, but after recess she was gone. I would see her run outside with the other children, but then I wouldn’t be able to find her anywhere. She would never come back to class after recess. She never stayed throughout the whole day. I just had a difficult time trying to keep track of her. She was so shy and quiet that, most of the time I couldn’t tell if she was there. I continued to keep track of her attendance, but the office had still not added her name to my class list.

I tried talking to Etta to find out more about her situation. I asked her about her parents, her family, her home, but she never told me anything. On the first day of school I had tried to talk to her in front of the whole class, and all the children started laughing. It clearly made Etta feel embarrassed, so after that I only tried to talk to her when there was no other students around.

I was concerned about Etta’s attendance. After the first nine weeks, she had only been to school five times. I asked the office if they any contact information so I could call home, but they said they did not. I decided to ask the other teachers if they knew anything about her. All the teachers I asked but one had no idea who I was talking about. They said they did not have any students by that name, and they had never seen her or heard of her before. I was starting to get confused and frustrated until I finally found a teacher who had some idea of who I was talking about.

The teacher that had heard of Etta was named Mrs. Stone. Mrs. Stone had been a teacher at that school for forty years. Most of the people in the town had had Mrs. Stone as their teacher at one point or another. She was normally a warm and pleasant woman, but when I asked her about this student, the color disappeared from her face. She said she had to go to a meeting and attempted to hurry out of the room, but I couldn’t let her.

“Please, Mrs. Stone.” I begged her. “I don’t know what’s going on. None of the teachers seem to know who this student is. The people in the office say they don’t have any record of her. She hardly ever shows up to school. What am I supposed to do? How am I supposed to help this student? I don’t know anything about this child.”

Mrs. Stone stopped at the door and turned towards me. She hesitated for a moment before responding. “What does the little girl look like?” I told her it was a little black girl with a blue bow in her hair. She confirmed it was indeed Etta Johnson that I had seen. “I think I know the girl you are talking about, Mr. Galloway. She was a former student of mine. Twenty years ago, I had a student in my class named Etta Johnson. She was a good little girl, sweet as could be. Her daddy used to own a mechanic shop here in town. Well one day during recess, Etta and some friends were playing outside with a ball. The ball got away from them and went out into the road. There was a drunk driver coming down the road too fast, and he hit her. Etta died instantly.”

Mrs. Stone started sobbing. “I tried to stop her, but I couldn’t get there fast enough. She was only nine years old.” We sat in silence while Mrs. Stone cried. When she started to dry her eyes, she said, “Well anyway, they don’t let the kids get that close to the road these days. They built a fence around the school yard the next day.”

I finished out the year working at that school, and every once in a while Etta Johnson would show up for class. I felt as though all Etta wanted was to be treated like any other child. I think she just wanted to get the chance to finish out the school year that was cut short for her. After that year, I didn’t go back to that school. I took a job working in an office closer to the city. It just felt a little too weird for me having a dead student in my class, and the whole experience turned me off of teaching. But that was four years ago. Sometimes I wonder if little Etta is still going to that school, making an occasional appearance, just to experience the childhood she never got to have.

The End