Retired Virginia teacher hand-delivers 30-year-old memories to students: ‘I really did make a difference’
By Joi Fultz
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CHESTERFIELD COUNTY, Va. (WTVR) — When asked to describe their favorite teacher, former Chesterfield County students didn’t choose the person who taught their favorite subject.
They chose the teacher whose kindness is still felt three decades later.
That teacher is retired educator Tricia Johnson.
“I don’t think that there’s any other words to describe her, other than amazing,” former students Catlin and Brandon Tomlin said.
“I just love my kids. Got attached to them,” Johnson said. “My heart was just to teach them everything I knew and kind of help raise them up.”
Johnson taught at Matoaca Elementary School in Chesterfield County from 1988 until she retired in 2004.
Now, she’s still on a mission to make her former students smile again — this time through old memories she discovered in her attic.
“I found this huge tub of pictures, photo albums. I can’t just throw them away. It just clicked in my brain, you know what? I need to divide them all up and I need to see if I can find these students,” Johnson said.
That moment turned into a labor of love.
Johnson spent countless hours sorting and printing pictures and putting them in order.
Then came the harder part — finding her former students.
“Since I’m not on Facebook, it’s been a little difficult,” she said.
From there, she set out to hand-deliver each person’s piece of the 30-year-old time capsule, even including copies of their kindergarten signatures.
“That’s how y’all wrote your names on the back of my yearbook,” she said to a former student during one delivery.
Johnson also added a personal poem for each student — words that reflect the depth of her admiration for each of them.
The reunions have left a mark on those who experienced them.
“She was that happy face and that safe place to go,” former student Brandy Birdine said.
“She just really broke the mold when it came to just being a hands down amazing teacher,” the Tomlins said.
Former student Tiffany Ashton said the sentiment runs deep among those Johnson taught.
“She changed a lot of kids’ lives,” Ashton said.
For Birdine, Johnson’s influence shaped the person she became.
“The way that she changed my life really made me want to give that same kind of impact,” Birdine said.
So far, Johnson has reconnected with almost 200 of her former students. Her goal is to reach all 400.
“It makes me excited to know that I really did make a difference and that I truly have helped some kids to become all that can be,” Johnson said. “My goal is to reach them all, and I hope I will before I go to heaven.”
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