KILLEEN, Texas — Gabriela Gonzalez is a first-year teacher in the Killeen Independent School District and remembers fondly the year she had Ms. Monica Proctor as her teacher in third grade at Eastward Elementary.
"I can only pick out a handful of teachers that motivated me and one of those was Mrs. Proctor. You know, I struggled with the content itself but it was just that relationship itself that we built that made me safe in her classroom," Gonzalez said.
Proctor said she will never forget how shy Gonzalez was back then.
"She was a tall student amongst her peers, she was taller," Proctor recalled. "She was very quiet, didn't say a lot, she wore glasses and she didn't introduce herself she just found a spot in the classroom and had a seat."
Proctor remembers the quiet Gonzalez found herself in a rambunctious classroom but never wavered from being the quiet student of the group.
The quiet and unassuming Gonzalez said she believes it was those days, in Proctor's classroom at Eastward Elementary, that helped to shape her as she got older.
"I believe so," Gonzalez said when asked if Proctor played that role for her as a teacher. "She was always kind and generous to others no matter what ethnicity that you are."
This past Tuesday, as Gonzalez sat in on a required Professional Development course for all KISD employees, a poem was read allowed that was familiar to Gonzalez -- one she wrote at Eastward Elementary 20 years ago and gave to Proctor. It would be those words that would reunite the two, unbeknownst to Gonzalez.
"For a child like Gabby who was real reserved and shy and quiet in class, she wouldn't be the first one to raise her hand," Proctor explained when asked about the significance of the poem. "To read the poem that she wrote that she loves to read and one of the specific books she said, her favorite book is Harry Potter and that was one of the books I read to them, that was a read-aloud."
Proctor said to see that in a poem Gonzalez gave to her, it was validation from a quiet and reserved girl that she was engaged in her classroom. It meant the world to her then as it does now.
"Me as a teacher and for educators, when children are able to, when you know they are engaged in their learning and you know they've been engaged with you and your classroom, and they show that in their learning, it's validation," Proctor said.
Gonzalez said when she turned around and hugged her mentor, it was in that moment she remembered all the things about this hero teacher she had never forgotten.
"Just that relationship most of all, that's what I remembered in her class. I was a shy one but that communication relationship she had with me," she said.
Proctor, with the 20-year poem in hand and laminated for safe for keeping, said she sees something special in her former pupil and it's incredible to see.
"It's surreal and what's been really neat is seeing, um, how she," Proctor paused, covering her eyes and fighting back tears. "She has drive, I see her heart and that is huge for me because that is one thing I tried to instill in my students."
Gonzalez, who was also an ESL student, said she hasn't forgotten either the way Proctor made her feel inside her classroom so many years go and that's the reason she is where she is today.
"She made it seem like everything is going to be okay no matter my ethnicity, or the language I spoke, so that's what I think drove me to be a teacher," she said.