She stood quietly in the back of the huge gymnasium, shepherding students in, as I was. Grade 12 departmental exams and we four teachers had all been called in to help. She looked about 60 or 65, graying hair, tall slim, fit, but definitely a teacher. Glasses, demeanor of authority, kind of like a librarian.

And I guess I categorized her as such and quickly concluded the stereotype in my mind as I floated also between desks, ensuring students were in the right place, ID cards at the right, labels being removed from the sticky tape to put on the official exam answer sheets.  We were all busy enough for a half an hour, helping the students settle in, scurrying late arrivals to their places. Quick reassurance, and we toddled off to the next student in need.

Remove the sticky tape from the label, write your ID number clearly on the answer sheet, check your booklet for legibility. As the kids followed the PA instructions we teachers circulated. Very strict rules, no talking of course, but also no hats, no backpacks, no beverages except water, no getting out of your chair without asking a teacher, no trip to the washroom without supervision. This is the most formal exam the students may write in their lives and you could nearly smell the tension. Kids signed in with shaky handwriting. One girl even momentarily spelled her own name wrong and laughed.  This is a room of jittering knees, of tapping fingers, pale faces, packs of Kleenex carefully placed by their papers, a tiny good-luck charm. 

I did not watch her.  I too was busy but when I did catch a glimpse of her, she was always busy too, helping someone or other. But after about 45 minutes I noticed her approach was more humane than mine. She was a person after all, dealing still with people. She did not talk to them but her eyebrows went up in greeting and she nearly winked.  When people coughed or sneezed, she strode over offering each a facial tissue –she was  everybody’s mom.

After about half the 250 students had finished the exam, hands shot up in the air to request permission to leave. We teachers took turns walking over to help check the exam papers for completeness, check the ID and then let the student leave. But I noticed she did this again more lovingly. She whispered to the student something about a ‘celebration’ and they smiled back. Whatever they said, and I did not hear it, it was a final touch of kindness.

Only sporadically had I learned more about her, between hushed whispers over the 3 hours exam. “Are you  a retired teacher?” I asked. She answered “I’m a retired cop.”  I laughed, but was a bit hurt she would be sarcastic with me. Nobody in the exam room supervising was not a teacher.

And yet in another fly-by I learned she was indeed a former police officer, in Glasgow. She had carried a nightstick and a flashlight and she demonstrated for me, during a break, how she would handcuff someone and how she could easily break his thumb were he to resist arrest. No guns needed.  She had also been an undercover agent posing as a prostitute, a store detective and even a paralegal. 

She had a thick Scottish accent and I had to listen closely but I loved the lilt of it. What was her name? She said “Young’ and added “I always tell the students ‘The face is old but the name is Young’”

I tried to find common ground. I too generations ago had relatives from Scotland. She was not impressed, saying with a smile, “Everybody comes from Scotland. I had Vietnamese students named Nguyen and I told them their ancestors were probably Scottish. I said Nguyen was Scottish for hello. They loved that”

She intrigued me.  At the end of the day when we were sorting papers, she showed me pictures of her grandchildren aged 3 and one- and of one of her  daughter when  she was in her teens. Then the surprise.

She showed me a photo of her daughter who had died at age 26 in a car accident. She had been a teacher and her wish had been for her mom to go back to school So apparently, the mother in her memory did go back to school and became a teacher. She said she had gone back in ’83.  She had not wanted to teach in a regular classroom though because she still loved to do paralegal work at night, so she chose to be a substitute teacher.  And she had been one now for 16 years.

The next day when I watched her supervise exams I was more in awe. What street smarts she brought to any students. I wanted to make sure I remembered her name for we substitute teachers rarely run into each other in this, the second largest school system in the country.

And I learned, to my absolute shock, that she is 75.

At 75 she is still driving around the city to assignments as requested, and walking as fast as I can down rows of desks to help students. And I watched her during the final session today because we were all getting a little bored with the 3 hour exam and she was like a little kid walking heel and toe, playfully at the back of the gym for a second or two, and at another instant happily and feeling unwatched, challenging herself to walk the length of the gym along one line. Playfulness.

In the staff room someone brought in their 9 month old twin daughters. The teacher had never seen them before but she spent some time playing with one of the babies. The child will not remember her. The child does not know her.  But the lady apparently does not waste any moments. She was holding the baby for the mother.

Sometimes you see what is going on in the schools is pure poetry. I felt like saying over the PA to the 250 students as they sat assembled, “Do you realize that the lady helping you through this is 75 years old?” 

We can give many gifts as teachers – expertise, skills, rules, sometimes even kindness. But in her case she was giving all these and one more-she  was giving her time.

She surely has options of how to fill her days – but I know of about 250 people who walked a little happier because of how she decided to spend today.