In 2018, while pursuing my master’s degree, life handed me a lesson I never expected. My father-in-law had been battling cancer, and when he passed away suddenly, my wife and I had to fly out of town to be with her family. During that time, I tried to stay on top of my coursework. I thought I had submitted everything. But weeks later, I found out I had missed a key assignment and I failed the course.

I appealed, explaining what had happened. I even submitted the death certificate, hoping for understanding. But my university didn’t relent, the rules were the rules. I would have to retake the course.

At the time, I was frustrated. But in hindsight, that experience changed how I saw teaching.

A couple of years later, when COVID-19 hit, I was teaching in a developing nation, one that was also in the midst of a military coup. Protests filled the streets. People were being arrested. There was fear everywhere. And I realized that my students, like me, were trying to hold their lives together while everything around them felt uncertain.

That’s when I began to change my practice. I stopped focusing on deadlines and compliance, and started focusing on agency and uplift. I offered more options for assignments, more grace with due dates, more understanding that what’s due sometimes needs to come second to what’s happening.

Later, I launched and developed my middle school’s advisory program, designed to help students connect, reflect, and belong. I became a founding member of the team that built our school’s Compassion Club, helping students lead service projects and kindness initiatives. And I changed – from being a teacher who tried to compel kids to one who aimed to captivate them.

My failed course in 2018 taught me what no syllabus could: that empathy and flexibility are not signs of lowered standards, but of professional strength and human understanding.

Life will keep teaching us if we let it. The challenge is to stay open to the lessons.

Ed X!