A teacher's impact goes far beyond exam scores. They shape the learning experience, connect with students, and nurture their personal growth. At Samuel Clemens High School, students expressed their admiration for their physics teacher with a heartfelt gift, capturing his touching reaction on video.
Representative Image Source: Pexels I Photo by Yan Krukau
In a YouTube video shared by 11Alive, physics teacher Roger Alcala receives a priceless gift from his students. Alcala, a beloved science enthusiast, is a favorite among his students. One day, they noticed something about their teacher—he was colorblind. A student recounted the moment, saying, "We have red and green markers, and we were drawing graphs, and he was like, 'With this marker...,' and we were like, 'That one is green, you already used green for the last one.'"
Alcala then confessed his colorblindness to the class, explaining that he couldn't distinguish between red and green hues. He shared, "My eyes and brain can't tell the difference sometimes depending on the hue."
Representative Image Source: Pexels | Photo by Thirdman
Alcala's students went above and beyond, raising $400 to buy special glasses that would allow him to see colors he never could. As the video shows, they presented him with the gift, forever changing his perspective.
Alcala was stunned and overjoyed when he found the glasses inside the gift box. His reaction after putting them on was priceless. He marveled at the vibrant colors of his students' t-shirts and his daughter's drawing, and the experience brought him to tears. Laughing through his emotions, he said, "Wow! I'm really colorblind," eliciting chuckles from his students.
Representative Image Source: Pexels | Photo by Yan Krukau
Alcala was more than pleased with his student's efforts. He explained how the glasses helped him see all the hues, "So, when I put these glasses on, it breaks up the wavelength so I can separate these two colors. And I see them how you see them. And that's the miracle. It happens instantly. It is all physics and science, because I am teaching them the physics, and they're giving it back, making my life better."
The online community was in awe of the heartwarming moment. It garnered over 4 million views on YouTube, with over 100,000 likes. In a majority of comments, people appreciated the students' efforts for their teacher.
Image Source: YouTube I @fernandochavez4312
Image Source: YouTube I @brettjern3264
One user, @davidt5200, appreciated the teacher, "You know what that means? That means you have impacted their lives and they want to repay it. We need more teachers like you." Another user, @nicolechamberland995, commented, "What a great bunch of kids! They were raised properly."
Robin Williams performs for military men and women as part of a United Service Organization (USO) show on board Camp Phoenix in December 2007
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Will your current friends still be with you after seven years?
Professor shares how many years a friendship must last before it'll become lifelong
Think of your best friend. How long have you known them? Growing up, children make friends and say they’ll be best friends forever. That’s where “BFF” came from, for crying out loud. But is the concept of the lifelong friend real? If so, how many years of friendship will have to bloom before a friendship goes the distance? Well, a Dutch study may have the answer to that last question.
Sociologist Gerald Mollenhorst and his team in the Netherlands did extensive research on friendships and made some interesting findings in his surveys and studies. Mollenhorst found that over half of your friendships will “shed” within seven years. However, the relationships that go past the seven-year mark tend to last. This led to the prevailing theory that most friendships lasting more than seven years would endure throughout a person’s lifetime.
In Mollenhorst’s findings, lifelong friendships seem to come down to one thing: reciprocal effort. The primary reason so many friendships form and fade within seven-year cycles has much to do with a person’s ages and life stages. A lot of people lose touch with elementary and high school friends because so many leave home to attend college. Work friends change when someone gets promoted or finds a better job in a different state. Some friends get married and have children, reducing one-on-one time together, and thus a friendship fades. It’s easy to lose friends, but naturally harder to keep them when you’re no longer in proximity.
Some people on Reddit even wonder if lifelong friendships are actually real or just a romanticized thought nowadays. However, older commenters showed that lifelong friendship is still possible:
“I met my friend on the first day of kindergarten. Maybe not the very first day, but within the first week. We were texting each other stupid memes just yesterday. This year we’ll both celebrate our 58th birthdays.”
“My oldest friend and I met when she was just 5 and I was 9. Next-door neighbors. We're now both over 60 and still talk weekly and visit at least twice a year.”
“I’m 55. I’ve just spent a weekend with friends I met 24 and 32 years ago respectively. I’m also still in touch with my penpal in the States. I was 15 when we started writing to each other.”
“My friends (3 of them) go back to my college days in my 20’s that I still talk to a minimum of once a week. I'm in my early 60s now.”
“We ebb and flow. Sometimes many years will pass as we go through different things and phases. Nobody gets buttsore if we aren’t in touch all the time. In our 50s we don’t try and argue or be petty like we did before. But I love them. I don’t need a weekly lunch to know that. I could make a call right now if I needed something. Same with them.”
Maintaining a friendship for life is never guaranteed, but there are ways, psychotherapists say, that can make a friendship last. It’s not easy, but for a friendship to last, both participants need to make room for patience and place greater weight on their similarities than on the differences that may develop over time. Along with that, it’s helpful to be tolerant of large distances and gaps of time between visits, too. It’s not easy, and it requires both people involved to be equally invested to keep the friendship alive and from becoming stagnant.
As tough as it sounds, it is still possible. You may be a fortunate person who can name several friends you’ve kept for over seven years or over seventy years. But if you’re not, every new friendship you make has the same chance and potential of being lifelong.