A CMS teacher’s graduation gift, eight years later

The card arrived earlier this month — a folded note that was neither expected nor surprising. “Congratulations!,” it began, followed by a full page of encouraging words for my son, Walton, whose high school graduation was approaching. “I hope the next chapter in your book is as great as the past few!” it finished. It was from Eve Wallwork, who taught him in fourth grade, eight years ago.

This is the story of an extraordinary teacher who cultivated an uncommon connection, but what’s behind it really isn’t unusual at all.

Eleven years ago, Eve Wallwork was a first-year fourth-grade teacher at Elizabeth Lane Elementary school. As teachers do, she celebrated the birthdays of each of her students during the school year. But as fewer teachers do, she also mailed cards to those students whose birthdays fell in the summer months.

The next year, she decided to keep sending birthday cards to that original class along with students in her current class. She did it again with students in her third class, which included my son.

“I just felt a very close connection to a lot of those kids,” she says. “As an elementary school teacher, they move on, of course. But they impacted my life as much as I impacted theirs. I wanted them to know that.”

And so each year, the cards went out. They carried simple and warm wishes. They offered encouragement. They mentioned something about the student that their teacher remembered. They were a connection.

It was one that went both ways. Students responded to Wallwork’s cards with notes of their own. She was added to some family Christmas card lists. She gave and she received — just like in the classroom.

Two years ago, members of that first fourth-grade class graduated from high school. COVID was raging then, but an astounding 20 of the 29 students got on a Zoom call with Wallwork so she could connect with them once more before they went off to college. This year, with students able to visit in person again, 11 seniors from Providence High School came to Elizabeth Lane to walk the hall in their caps and gowns and see Wallwork, now an instructional facilitator at the school.

“It was surreal that kids would want to come back to their elementary school,” she said. But in a way, it’s not that unusual. The best of our teachers often stay with us, long after we leave their classrooms. They shape us and challenge us and believe in us. We remember them, and they remember, too. The cards Eve Wallwork mailed to her students each year were something extra, for sure. But the connection they represented — “It’s a major part of what we do,” she says.

About those cards: the graduation notes are the last Wallwork will send to each of the students. They’ll be headed to new addresses, to new places, to college and beyond. So last Monday at Elizabeth Lane, Eve Wallwork had one more moment with her former fourth-graders. They talked about their plans and hugged. They gathered for a photo, capped and gowned and surrounding their fourth-grade teacher. Someone who remembered them each year. Someone they will never forget.