June 06th, 2025

In 2018 on of my best friends (and teammate) past away suddenly and very unexpectedly. This morning, I opened up my “notes” and somehow this popped up, the speech I wrote for her funeral but couldn’t bring myself to speak. I wish I had, but wasn’t strong enough then so now, to Kristin, the most inspiring person I’ve met.

I met Kristin a little over a year ago- I need to pause for a moment because the fact that she was only in my life for just one short year blows my mind. In that short year, and despite our wildly different views on homework (which I have to add because I know it would make her laugh) she quickly went from just a coworker to a dear friend.

For the majority of my career I have worked at the best schools, with some of the best educators in the country- teachers who dedicate their lives to their jobs and their students. Despite having been surrounded by the best of the best for so long, I don’t think I have ever met anyone as hard working or as dedicated as Kristin. She loved what she did and she always put in her all. Going through her classroom these last couple weeks, I marvel at how detailed and organized she was. She put passionate thought into every single detail in her room- from her beautiful library, to the posters on the wall, right down to table supply bins on desks- each bin with carefully placed pictures of the bin, with the supplies, to help remind her students how to keep them organized. And her room was always just that- super organized in a way that helped kids succeed.

She had fourth grade down to a science with materials meticulously organized in color coded folders, by subject, in time order ready to go. But things were never actually ready to go because despite what may have looked like perfection to an outsider, she still felt the need to spend hours ensuring each lesson was a perfect fit for the new students in fourth grade that year. Because she was that teacher. The teacher who worked endlessly to ensure her students were well cared for.

But beyond being one of the best educators I have ever had the pleasure to work with, she became one of the best friends I have had. When my family faced our own tragedy over the summer, she was one of the only people outside of my family I actually talked to about it. I knew starting the new school year with that type of pain would be the hardest thing in my career I could face and Kristin somehow knew how to help me through. The day before she passed away, I was set to leave work right after school as close to the bell as I could manage. There are two exits out of my room, one that leads directly into her room and another that takes me around it. Typically I would walk through her room so we could laugh and chat about our day... but that day I was feeling extra introverted and just wanted to get home. As I was just about to rush out, without saying goodbye, she walked in with a carefully organized stack of papers ready to go for my class for the next week. She handed them to me, looked at me and said, “hey, can we just talk about not school for a bit?” And we did. We sat around and laughed for a good hour. We laughed about our siblings, about my daughter, about how hard it was growing up with curly hair- and then about how my second year of teaching literally scared my hair straight. And when I finally did leave, I left so happy and thankful. Thankful that she walked in when she did, thankful that I didn’t just leave without saying goodbye, thankful for an hour of good laughs and of course thankful for a great friend.

I woke up the next day smiling, thinking about how lucky I am to have the people I have in my life. I was of course not yet aware that I had lost one of my favorites. A big part of me will always be tremendously sad that she was taken from us too soon- but more than that, I am so forever grateful that she was a part of my life. I know that to honor her, we should all keep living our lives filled laughter- and of course an extra large dose of sarcasm- because she wouldn’t want it any other way.