Teacher Discovers Students’ Heartbreaking Secrets During Class Activity

Because students spend a lot of their waking hours in school, there is no doubt that teachers have a huge impact in their lives. In fact, a lot of teachers become their students’ second parents.

One teacher found an idea on Pinterest and applied it to her class. Little did she know that she would discover rather heartbreaking secrets from her kids, many of whom are still too young to face such burdens.

Elle Deal explained, “I started the lesson off by talking about how everybody has stress in their lives and it’s a matter of how they handle it… I was just thinking, what is something in your life that is stressful to you, what is something that you’re afraid of… or something that no one knows and it’s like a weight on you.

According to her, she wanted to encourage her students [ages 10 to 11] and make them feel that they are valued; thus, she thought of this writing exercise so she can reach out to them. What she discovered broke her heart.

Photo credit: Elle Deal

A number of students wrote about having problems at home. Of course, that is to be expected as no one lives in a perfect home yet these students are experience problems that are way too challenging than what most kids experience.

Teacher Elle shared some of the responses on her Facebook account which garnered a lot of comments from the online community, making it viral.

We spend so much time talking and judging what we think we know… we need to ask more questions and spend more time listening. We also need to shift our mindset and see things from other people’s perspective. Give more than we get. Live to serve and to help make a difference in others’ lives,” she shared.

Thankfully, not all the students live in bad homes or have heavy burdens to carry. She revealed that there were also a lot who shared rather funny answers.

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