Why I Still Cry In June

More than twenty-five years ago, I began my teaching career in Norwood as a second-grade special education teacher at John P. Oldham School.

On paper, I was prepared. I had the coursework, the training, the strategies. But no amount of preparation could have captured the magnitude of what it truly meant to step into that role – to hold space for children not just as learners, but as whole, complicated, beautiful human beings.

A few weeks into that first fall, my classroom door flew open and in burst a tiny, blonde, seven-year-old sprite.

“Hi, everyone! I’m Callie!” she announced, her voice somehow bigger than her small frame, her smile instantly filling every corner of the room.

She was little – so little that you might have overlooked her if you didn’t know better. But from the very beginning, Callie occupied a space far larger than her size – in the classroom, and, before long, in my heart.

From her first day to her last, Callie taught me more than I could have ever hoped to teach her. She showed me the quiet, extraordinary power of love. She revealed how much joy can live in the smallest moments – a flower pushing through the dirt, a song sung just because it feels good. She embodied resilience in a way that both inspired and humbled me.

Because beneath that bright smile and boundless kindness was a story marked by trauma, grief, and hardship – burdens no seven-year-old should have to carry. Callie had already experienced the kind of pain that can bring adults to their knees. And yet, every single day, she showed up. She showed up with joy. With generosity. With a fierce determination to lift others up, even while carrying so much herself.

She cheered for her classmates, especially those who struggled. She noticed beauty where others might not. She reminded all of us – me most of all – that connection is not just important; it is everything.

That year, I learned a great deal about teaching. But more importantly, I learned about being human.

When winter turned to spring, Callie’s family moved across Massachusetts. I still remember the day she left – her aunt, who had lovingly taken in Callie and her siblings, saying goodbye with quiet strength. And Callie, in the back seat of the car, waving with such enthusiasm I thought her arm might give out, her smile still unwavering.

I had cried many tears over the course of that year – tears for her struggles, her pain, the weight of what she carried. But nothing prepared me for the ache of watching her go.

I remember exactly where I was sitting – on the front bench outside John P. Oldham Elementary School – when a colleague, with a kind of salty certainty, said to me, “You’re new to this. You won’t be crying about your kids when you’ve been teaching as long as I have.”

And I remember wondering, quietly, uneasily, if that might one day be true. If time and experience would somehow dull the depth of what I felt. If loving my students so fiercely was something that would fade.

But here is what I know now, all these years later:

She was wrong. So very wrong.

Time has not lessened the depth of those feelings – it has deepened them. Experience has not hardened my heart – it has widened it. If anything, each passing year has made me more aware of just how profound these connections are, and how fleeting, and how sacred.

More than two decades after that goodbye, while teaching in another district, I received a message from a former colleague. Callie – who had never once left my thoughts, my prayers, or my heart – was looking for me.

I didn’t hesitate. I dialed her number as quickly as I could.

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And when I heard her voice – still bright, still warm, still unmistakably hers – it was as if no time had passed at all. The floodgates opened. Not just with emotion, but with gratitude. With awe.

Because there is no greater gift, in this profession or in this life, than knowing that you mattered to someone. That in some small way, you were part of their story.

Callie grew up. She is married now, a college graduate, a homeowner. But more than any of those milestones, she is still exactly who she was that first day – someone who brings light with her wherever she goes.

And as for me? After all these years, I still cry at the end of every school year. I still stand and wave as my students head off into their next chapter, my heart full and aching all at once.

Not because I haven’t learned to “toughen up.”

But because I have learned, again and again, that this – this deep, abiding, wholehearted connection – is the very best part of what we do.

And it is something I will never, ever outgrow.

Meghan Walsh

Oldham