Role models

I hope everyone has at least one role model growing up. I was privileged to have had several. My parents, obviously, were (and still are!) the biggest ones, but I was fortunate to have numerous teachers who impacted my life, too. Belinda Myers was one of those teachers.

I found out a week ago that Mrs. Myers had passed away suddenly in a motorcycle accident, and the news hit me hard. I had seen another teacher a few weeks prior and, oddly enough, had asked what Mrs. Myers was up to. It was jarring, to say the least, to hear that she passed away not long after.

There's a lot that needs to be said about Mrs. Myers, but I can only speak from the perspective of a former student. I will say that as a "black sheep" sort of attendee, I found Mrs. Myers to be welcoming and understanding. I could always go to her if I had an issue of any kind, and if she couldn't fix it, she could at least change my perspective on it so it didn't seem so bad. She always had something constructive to say, so if you were doing something she didn't agree with, she would tell you why and how to change it. She was calm and didn't yell or raise her voice, but she was still fair and wouldn't let students get away with breaking rules. She also didn't make it a secret how much she cared for her students.

Since high school, which has been nearly ten years now, I've had the opportunity to catch up with a lot of teachers, and even tell some of them how much their instruction meant to me. One thing that I'll always regret now is that I never got to do that with Mrs. Myers. She was the vice principal when I graduated and I had always thought, while attending, how I would have liked to see how she ran it as principal. She was principal for several years after, and I can only imagine she did a great job with that, too.

That is my fond, little memorial of Mrs. Myers and the great teacher she was. I had three classes with her: Media Studies, Law, and Journalism, and I still think of all of them. My thoughts are, especially, with her family at this time.

Thank you, Mrs. Myers.