Last Wednesday, I had the opportunity to speak to the Mount Vernon Cares groups during A and B lunch. After two years away from teaching at the high school, it was striking to see how much construction has changed the hallways and familiar places I once knew. This article is a written version of what I shared with the students and mentors of Mount Vernon Cares. Thank you, Jill Lowry, for the honor.
I don’t remember the first time I heard the song, but I do remember immediately connecting with it. In her first number one hit, “The House That Built Me,” Miranda Lambert sings about returning to her childhood home. It’s a beautiful piece that has always resonated with me, especially in the way she reflects on the small details that serve as evidence of a life once lived.
My family moved several times before settling into the home that left its mark on my childhood. That house sat on Fifth Street and what used to be Watson Street, now renamed Tim Garcia. My dad built a small, knee-high fence to redirect the kids who cut across our yard on their walk home from school. It didn’t work at all.
I knew that house so well that you could have blindfolded me, and I could have walked through it without stubbing my toe once. As a kid, I dreamed of one day returning to buy it for myself. It truly felt like the house that built me.
Every now and then, I would use Google Maps to take a digital drive through La Feria, Texas, just to reminisce. A few years ago, during one of those virtual visits, I discovered that my childhood home had been demolished and replaced with a new one. It was heartbreaking to realize I would never walk through it again.
But just a few months later, a realization set in: it’s not the house that builds us, it’s the people who lived life within it.
The Mount Vernon High School campus is now somewhere in the middle of its own transformation, becoming something entirely new. I know that if I stepped back into my old classrooms, I wouldn’t recognize the decor I once carefully put up.
Still, it was a joy to have a few former students recognize me and come up to say hello. I imagine that in a few years, only a handful of teachers will remember me, but that’s part of life. It’s not the classroom walls that welcome me back. It’s not the desks that greet me. It’s the students whose lives I was able to be part of.
When I run into them at Brookshire’s or around town, we often share a memory or two, small reminders of a shared chapter.
I showed the group a photo of the very first class I taught at Mount Vernon High School. If I had the chance, I’d love to go back and teach that group again, just a little differently. I’ve grown quite a bit since then.
Then there was the original MVAV group, the crew that really set the tone. During football season, Fridays were full days from sunup to sundown. I’d arrive at school around six in the morning, teach a full day, then load up right after dismissal and drive up to two hours to set up. We’d go live at kickoff, stream the entire game, spend an hour tearing down, and then make the drive back home. Not once did those students complain.
On the same day I was speaking, I was also receiving messages about one of those students graduating from Air Force basic training. It fit so perfectly into what I was sharing that I couldn’t help but include it. Again, it’s not the building that shapes us, it’s the people who shared life there.
Later that evening in Paris, I had an unexpected encounter at a gas station with one of my former students from the final years of my teaching. What a blessing that moment was. She immediately broke into tears, overwhelmed with joy at running into one of her favorite teachers. (Her words, not mine)
It’s moments like those that remind us what truly builds us.
And sharing those stories here on MVNow is one of the ways we continue building something meaningful together as a community.
