WACO, Texas — In the smoldering debris that once was G.W. Carver Middle School in East Waco there is sadness, grief and a sense of loss as the investigation into how a historic building burned to the ground early Tuesday morning.
"We drove by it yesterday," said Stephanie Dean, a sixth/seventh grade social studies teacher at G.W. Carver Middle School.
"It's a whole different thing to process, there's so much history just burned down to the ground. So many memories that were made there, it's hard to come to terms with," she said.
Dean said teaching is a relatively new profession for her, a career change she made after a working as an engineer for the Texas Department of Transportation. She said she made the change but said the decision to pursue teaching and changing the lives of children were based on pure joy.
Dean said she's thought about her students and what they've been going through in the aftermath of a fire that has robbed many of them of a place they called home.
"We serve a lot of at-risk students and school is basically home to them and it's where some get their emotional needs met," Dean explained. "A lot of them, they depend on it so they can get their hot meals and it's really stressful thinking about what they are going through right now."
Dean said she loved to work at Carver and to be a part of its deep and storied history inside those walls that have seen so many faces and heard so much laughter, telling 6 News that's what she'll miss the most.
"Carver was like no other school I've ever walked in before, I mean it's been around for awhile and it served as an Academy, I believe in the 90's, and the students that attended Carver Academy, they painted these little tiles with their names on them," she explained. "These tiles were very specific and special to themselves and you have hundreds of these tiles lining the hallways and you can get an idea of the students who walked the halls of Carver and it's very sentimental."
Dean struggled to find her words, those names and pictures on each tile dancing in her memory and the reality of those memories being swallowed by fire, is heartbreaking.
"Thinking about how all of that's gone," she said, her voice trailing off in disbelief, "I really feel like we were really robbed of something."
As one would imagine, Dean said she hasn't come to terms with the loss of her classroom and the many school supplies and decorations turned to ash in mere minutes. She did manage to pack a few things that students made for her at the end of last year, a personal win during a publicly trying time.
"Those little things that have so much emotional value to me, they are packed away and sitting here at my house," she said. "They will make it back to my new classroom because those little things just can't be replaced."
Dean said a message posted to social media Wednesday by G.W. Carver Principal, Dr. Isaac Carrier, has been a source of inspiration for her in the wake of an unthinkable tragedy.
"He said it's the students, it's the staff, it's all of us, the people, that make Carver and I am just trying to hold onto that," she explained.
Dean said she never planned to leave Carver and hoped to spend the rest of her teaching career inside that special building and with all of the incredible kids that were to pass through those halls specifically. She said she'll be there, too, when the new building opens and G.W. Carver Middle School makes its triumphant return to East Waco.
"We will continue to do great things and I do think something a lot better will come out of this and I definitely want to be a part it, absolutely," she said. "We'll get through this, it's what we do. We'll keep on going and continue to forge our own path."