The Woman Who Taught the Teacher

Happy Mother's Day to Mrs. Sandy (Anderson) Alexander, the OG

I am a great teacher because my mother was (and still is) a great teacher. That's not me being sentimental; it’s just the truth.

My mom, Sandra (Anderson) Alexander, has been teaching — and reaching — for almost half a century. From the elementary school classroom before 1979 all the way through her retirement in 2013 — and even then, she wasn't done. Retirement didn't slow her down; it just changed her zip code. She went on to substitute teach and work as an intervention specialist with high school students because that's what teachers like my mother do. They don't stop teaching. They can't! LOL! It's not a job; it's their calling.

The Kind of Teacher Legends Are Made Of

My mother was (and is) beloved, respected, and stern, and somehow all three of those things live in her at the same time without contradiction. She was the kind of teacher whose former students (people older than me and younger than me alike) will stop mid-sentence to tell you about how she changed their lives. 

You know the type. They’re the ones who spot her in the grocery store, at a church event, or somewhere else out in the community and stop whatever they’re doing just to say “thank you”; it’s not because the moment calls for it, but because they've been carrying that gratitude and finally have the chance to give it back. What’s kind of funny to me is that she had parents so confident in her, so convinced that she had the right to raise their children alongside them, that they gave her permission to "discipline" their kids — even when that was no longer legally standard practice. That's not her being a teacher; it’s her being the village elder in a classroom.

My mom didn't just teach inside four walls. She’s an educator everywhere she goes: in the church house, the grocery store line, and yes, even from her hospital bed.

Teaching isn't the only gift she carries into every room. My mother was a gospel singer, rooted in the Black church, carrying a tradition she inherited from those who came before her. Music runs in the family; her father sang too, and she grew up lifting her voice alongside her mother and sister in the same sacred spaces. She could sing her face off, and I mean that in the most literal, full-throated, stop-what-you're-doing kind of way. She didn't just sing; she owned singing. There was a confidence in her voice, a certainty that what she had to offer the room was worth hearing, and she never shrank from it.

I sing too, but not like her. Honestly, that confidence she had (that standing-in-your-gift-without-apology energy) is the one thing I didn't fully inherit. I've always been more shy about it, more hesitant to step into that space the way she did without a second thought. It's funny how you can grow up watching someone be so completely themselves and still find yourself working toward that same freedom decades later. She made it look easy, and I'm still learning that it's supposed to be.

What Happened and Why It Matters

On March 16th, my stepdad called, asking me to come help him get my mom into the car. When I walked into my mother's house, I found her sitting in my stepdad's walker chair. She couldn't stand because she was in too much pain and too weak to stand on her own. When I looked into my mommy’s eyes (those same eyes that had looked at me my entire life with certainty and strength), I saw something I had never seen there before. She really needed me, but not necessarily in the way that children need their mothers; it was in the way that one human being needs another to step up and make the call that saves their life.

I told my stepdad to call 9-1-1, which he did, and then handed me the phone. There was no hesitation on my part; there was no time for it. What started as strep throat had turned into something far more dangerous — sepsis throughout her entire body, which had first settled into her knee. The fear in those early days was real. I kept my “game face”, but I was a nervous wreck! (By the grace of God, she did not lose any limbs.) 

My mom fought to get better for three weeks, was moved to a rehabilitation facility for about two weeks, then back to the hospital when her knee wasn't healing and required another surgery, and then back to rehab again. Through all of it, the sepsis and the medications took a toll on her kidneys, adding another layer to an already fragile recovery. She eventually made it home, and we exhaled — carefully.

Then this past Monday, just days before Mother's Day, my daughter and I were driving my mom from an appointment she’d had with her primary care physician to address some issues with her medication not interacting properly with her diabetes. About an hour and a half after we left, something was wrong. I pulled into a McDonald's parking lot and called 9-1-1 again; this time, watching my mother go unconscious right in front of me, trying to stay calm for my daughter, and trying to do everything at once because there was no one else to do it. Her blood sugar had crashed, which never happens. She spent a few more days in the hospital to get it regulated.

Today is Mother's Day — May 10th. She has been home since Wednesday. I tell you all of this not for sympathy, and certainly not because my mother would want her business in the street. I tell you because this is what love looks like when it grows up. She spent decades being the one who handled things in the classroom, in the church, and in our home. 

This season, it has been my turn to handle things for her, to be the one who looks in her eyes and knows what she needs before she can say it, to make the call, to pull over, and to stay calm so she doesn't have to. She taught me how to do all of that; she just didn't know she was teaching me for this.

The Legacy She Gave Me

I remember one time when I was in elementary school, visiting my mom’s classroom. One of her students (one of the ones who'd tried to give her a run for her money, apparently) looked at me with something between pity and disbelief and said, "Mrs. Alexander (or Anderson) is your mom? I feel sorry for you."

That little silly rabbit.

Sandy (Anderson) Alexander, being my mother, is the greatest advantage I have ever had. I didn't grow up soft; I grew up sharp (and a little sheltered). I grew up knowing how to carry myself in a room, how to hold my ground with adults and children alike, and how to correct without cruelty and to love without coddling. We don't take mess from kids; we don't take mess from adults, and we do it all with class.

That's her in me. Every day that I walk into my own classroom at Marion-Franklin High School, I am drawing from a well she spent a lifetime filling. My voice when I redirect a student — that's her; my standards for excellence — that's her; and my refusal to let a young person believe less of themselves than they're capable of — absolutely, without question, that is her.

Happy Mother's Day, Mom

Sandy Alexander, you are more than a mother. You are a legacy and a legend. You are proof that the work of a great teacher doesn't stay inside a school building; it lives on in the people those teachers raise, inspire, and love. It lives in the students who are now grown adults, pronouncing your name with reverence. It lives in me every single time I choose this profession with my whole chest. I am who I am because of who you are.

Thank you for never letting me settle, for teaching me that stern and loving are not opposites, and for still showing up in every room and every season, even the hard ones. You are the bomb, Mom, and because of you, so am I.

Happy Mother's Day to every teacher-mother out there: the ones who never clock out.