August 7, 2024 will be a day I remember for the rest of my life, this was the day she leveled up.

Everyone can probably think of an influential person in their own life. Someone that just simply made a difference, a lasting difference. My mentor came into my life the year I would turn 10 years old. For a brief timeline to help add more perspective to this post, I now have a 10 year old daughter of my own.

I heard of her passing only a few days after her death, while scrolling Facebook. An old classmate had posted her obituary and when I read it I couldn’t stop the tears or the thoughts and feelings that followed.

I had been working a fundraiser for my daughter’s softball team earlier that day and my daughter & I had just stopped for a drink and a snack at Sonic.

I read the post and the news of her passing it was too much for me at that moment so I cried, actually if I’m being honest, I ugly cried for a moment. My daughter, sitting beside me in the passenger seat, asked me if I was ok. I told her that I would be fine, but I had just learned that my favorite teacher of all time had passed away. She said with wide eyes, “mom she must have been an awesome teacher!” I said, “baby she was, but more than that she was just an amazing human being!” I cried a bit more before wiping my tears and driving home. I am so thankful I had the privilege of being one of her students.

It’s not like we had a common friendship or even said a word to each other in the last 24 years since graduating high school, but yet, she still somehow had this amazing impact. The impact she made happened at a time in my young life when the world I knew had begun to disintegrate around me. My parents had divorced and dealing with it wasn’t easy for me. Everything was changing & happening at such a rapid rate that I thought for sure there would be no way of ever finding my footing. I was sure my life would always be uncertain.

In general, as a child at this time, my life was uncertain & left it impossible for me to predict any of the chaos that would often occur … unless of course, I was with Mrs. Rains.

In her class, it wasn’t chaotic it was the opposite. There was a schedule to maintain, and we maintained it. I knew that her students were important to her. I knew this because of how she made me feel as her student. I always felt loved and recognized for working hard. I always had a task, a lesson, or a job. It wasn’t that I was her favorite, (😍 although I told myself I was!) she was the same way with all of her students. She had a magical way about her that students responded to. It wasn’t that she was the nicest teacher that would let a student get away with being mischievous or rude, she taught us that it was a better option to be a good person. She would keep class engaging and interesting.

I think of all the lessons and the many ways she helped her students. I wonder how many cups of coffee she would consume to get through the day? It makes me tired now realizing the amount of energy she must have given us on the daily.

She would have been the exact age that I am now, when she was my teacher. A 42 year old teacher doesn’t really sound like a person with an endless amount of energy, does it?

She was a source of good energy. She gave that good energy to all of her students.

Mrs. Rains was a member of the Muskogee Creek Nation and Yuchi Tribes. She had the most beautiful hair I had ever seen. Long and black as a starless night. She would wear beaded barrettes to hold half of her hair up. I would always compliment her on how much I loved her beaded barrettes & jewelry. I was a very shy child so for me to say anything to anyone was a big deal. As I didn’t start speaking to most people until around 5th grade. She noticed my interest and possibly considered my home life at the time & she took being my teacher one step further and decided she would teach me how to make my own jewelry.

She had a conference with my dad. My dad was a single-parent at the time. She asked him if she could keep me after school a couple days a week to teach me how to bead loom. He agreed, and this would be where I learned some of the most important lessons of my life & a little about jewelry making.

Teaching someone is easy when you love to watch them learn.

Mistakes should occur when you are learning anything and it is good to remind your students they will be equipped with an eraser; because nothing is perfect, especially when learning something for the first time.

Laugh with your students, cry with your students, show them all the emotions. Life is emotional and they will be more successful if they know how to deal with the range of emotions. One emotion she always loved to share with us was joy. She had such an amazing laugh. I am thankful that I can still hear it.

Recognize accomplishments and set achievable goals. This is great for the classroom and the home. We all need to know that we are doing a good job when we are putting in the work.

Lastly, during the bead loom lessons, she taught me to appreciate the calm, to let the peace surround my heart and mind, and to remember to always place a mistake in my beading pattern intentionally. “Michelle, nothing man-made will ever be perfect, we will save that job for our creator.” I learned by intentionally placing flaws in patterns that our beauty or uniqueness can come from our imperfections, and sometimes the best placed imperfections will look like a work of art.

During an imperfect time in my life she was definitely an unexpected blessing. I must have been placed in her life as that imperfectly placed bead.

A student, although messy and shy, was one that stood out to her and in all of my awkwardness she somehow recognized my broken heart and began to stitch it back together, to help me feel whole again. My mentor taught me to focus on the peace instead of the mess happening around me. She let me know that perfect rarely ever occurs. I’m certain now that she was more than a mentor but an angel sent to help me find my purpose and peace in this messy place we call life.

I will always remember the lessons that she took the time to teach me. In knowing this I hope that maybe someday I can also be that unexpected blessing in someone else’s broken pattern of life and this thought makes me feel as comforted as one of her big hugs.

Mrs. Rains- I’ll never forget you!