“I love when former students come back and say ‘Mrs. Howard, I know, I wasn’t really paying attention to your class and I didn’t think the information was that important, but I use it all the time whenever we are talking about skills, it helped me,’” Instructor Traci Howard said. 

   Former students don’t come in very often, but if they do, this is great. Some teachers like instructor David Binkley, have former students who revisited them. “The most meaningful conversation I had was with a student long, long time ago that I tried very hard to get into media science. I just thought she would be perfect for it and it took me, I don’t even know how long to get her to finally try it, go into it and the people who are involved in it and that’s what she end up going into. She ended up coming back afterwards and thanking me, giving me a card and saying that, you literally followed my path for me and so that was really awesome,” Binkley said.  

   Another teacher with former student experience is instructor Emma Jacobson. She doesn’t have a specific example for a meaningful conversation with a former student, but she personally likes having conversations with students she had earlier in her class, when they talk about their future plans, how they are doing and how everything is going. Also it is meaningful to her, to hear what students thought about her class. “ I see my former students not super often. It usually depends on the student, and usually you see them the first few years afterwards they might come back to you and then they start to make connections elsewhere and they start going down that path. It is usually a couple times a year that I see a student. I probably run into students more often outside, in the regular world like just the supermarket than I do here, so yeah. I just saw a student yesterday and was like, didn’t know you were home,” Binkley said.

   It also depends on the class the students have taken, so some teachers receive more visits from their former students than others, like Jacobson for example. Jacobson sees her students pretty much every day and she thinks it is good to see them after teaching them. 

  Most of the teachers are happy to see their former students, like Jacobson and Binkley. ”I love it when former students visit. It makes me so happy, even if they come in and interrupt my class while I’m teaching. I’m then like ‘Oh my gosh, I’m so excited to see you!’. I love it and I always love to hear from former students,” Jacobson said.

   Binkley says that he loves it when former students come back to talk to him, because he likes to know what his former students end up doing. He just recently saw one of his former students and had a conversation with her. He loves to know if they are using anything that he taught them. 

   Also experience with former students has had instructor Ryan Burke. 

“The one conversation that kinda stands out in particularly to me,  would be a former student I had, who had really just a lot of bad luck in college. I think it wasn’t a great fit, she just kinda jumped into the college and had some struggles academically, had some with roommates, things like this. And mainly I was just there to vent to, helped her with a couple of things as far as classes, but mainly just caring about her wellbeing,” Burke said. 

       While working and living in the community, Burke says he sees some students because they are siblings of former students he knows, or at public places like the grocery store. Some of his former students reach out directly to him about college. 

     Most teachers teach different classes, but one thing they have in common: They have former students and they love when they revisit and talk with them. Instructor Traci Howard is no exception to this. 

  “My most meaningful conversation with a former student was not from West Ottawa, but I had a student who, when I had her in class, was really stressed out as a senior, because her parents wanted her to pursue a job in the medical field, she really didn’t want to. She was worried they were going to be really upset. And we had a really great conversation about pursuing what you had a passion for and she eventually, and that’s the only influence I gave her, but she eventually went into family and science of teaching; it’s just what I do. She connected with me, probably ten years after I had her and ensured how thankful she was that we had had this conversation and how much she enjoyed what she does,” Howard said. 

   Like the teachers before, she absolutely loves it when her former students come back, to chat about their lives, their relationships and what they end up doing. 

   West Ottawa graduates should consider stopping by after graduation, even if it is two years or longer ago that they graduated; all teachers love hearing back from their students.