Making a Classroom Visit | Video

Kristin Clouston | 11/30/2012

We may not remember all of our high school or even college instructors, but most of us will never forget our first ones. A special reunion took place today between a teacher and her first graders.

Darla Schrick`s first grade classroom at Jeannette Myhre Elementary is a second home for her and her students, and this is the first time she`s been here since the beginning of the month.

"I felt happy because I haven`t seen her in a long time," said one of her students, Aiden.

They know for now, she can only visit.

"One day she fainted when she was going to school and then she fell down," said another student, Greyson.

"Then she had to bloody nose and had to go to the hospital," said another student, Cloria.

"We started running a guru of tests and found out I have a tumor on the inside of my brain," Schrick said.

She had surgery to take the pressure off, and is getting ready to have two more surgeries next month.

"This one is extremely rare so they actually do surgery for this one and being it`s on the stem they may have to do radiation if they can`t get most of it off."

Schrick says she wants to come in and read with them whenever possible. "Listening to them read and the progress they`ve made the past two weeks is phenomenal. Good for the heart definitely and the spirits."

"She lets us pick partners and we get to choose whenever we want to sit to read to self," said first grader, Nathaniel.

Her class is small, she only has 16 students, and misses her day to day contact with them.

"Just seeing them every day and the learning experiences that we have, the challenges we can go through, and those teachable moments when you have an ah ha moment and the light comes on," Schrick said.

"She`s very nice and she helps us a lot if we get stuck," Greyson said.

Schrick hopes to be back in the classroom in February, but until she`s ready, Monna Terres will take care of things. She started teaching at Myhre in 1973 and just retired last spring.

"It wasn`t hard because I`ve known Monna and I knew that she`d do a phenomenal job. So that made it a lot easier. Had I not been able to pick my sub it would have been extremely hard," Schrick said.

Schricksays her school has been extremely supportive and she can`t wait to get back to her classroom and her kids.

Schrick and her husband Shane have two children, they`re four and a half and one. They`re having to travel to Rochester for the surgeries, and it`s very expensive. Tomorrow there`s going to be a Spaghetti benefit dinner at Faith Lutheran Church to help cover their costs. It`s from 4:30 until 7:00.

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