I walked toward the doors of Lake Delton Elementary for what was likely the last time. The school where I had taught for thirty-three years would soon close, but the memories still rushed in.

My fourth-graders hopped in potato sacks during Pioneer Day races in the field. Near the tall tree, we released painted lady butterflies we’d raised from larvae. And that puddle might be the same low spot where we brought ducklings on a warm spring day. We had hatched them in an incubator, and since they’d imprinted on us, they followed us down the hall and outside to splash in the puddle. That same fence post is where I tied my horse, Candy, the day I rode her to school for Wisconsin’s Sesquicentennial celebration.

I opened the heavy doors and walked down the hall. While studying to become a teacher, I’d read Christy. I romantically imagined changing lives through brilliant lesson plans and wisdom. Reality turned out to be a little less noble — and a lot messier.

I entered the classroom that used to be mine. It triggered another Monday morning when I was greeted by a terrible smell. The fifth-grade teacher next door wondered if the sewer had backed up. I hurried to the guinea pig cage and then checked Froglegs’ tank, but both were innocent.

Students began pouring in, and I asked them to open their desks.

One girl cracked hers open, then quickly slammed it shut.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Remember how we were supposed to have show-and-tell on Friday,” she said quietly, “but we never got to it?”

My heart started pounding.

Slowly, she lifted out a plastic bag containing what had once been a fish.

Another fond memory is the day I prepared an elaborate lesson on ants using our ant farm. I planned to explain how ants “milk” aphids for sweet liquid while students identified storage rooms, pantries, and cemeteries. Before I could begin, I asked a student to open the cap and give them food. As soon as he did, ants poured out, sending students joyfully scrambling around the room trying to catch them.

“Ouch!” someone yelled. “They bite!”

So much for brilliant lesson plans.

I learned it was hard to hold students’ attention during history lectures, but ex-principal Percy Seamans could do it. On Pioneer Day, he brought in his horsehair trunk filled with antique treasures. By lantern light, students examined McGuffey readers and the stirrup from a woman’s sidesaddle before practicing math with chalk and slates.

And sometimes, the students themselves became unforgettable teachers. Long before Bello Nock became a world-renowned comedic daredevil, he brought in a unicycle for show-and-tell and zigzagged it between the desks while we sat spellbound.

A month ago, at a book event in Reedsburg, a former student greeted me, cradling the book she’d written and illustrated while in my class. The construction-paper cover was faded. “I’ve kept it!” she said. After I flipped through it, she prompted me to look at the back, where a lined checkout card was filled with signatures. “Other kids checked it out!”

That moment cemented my idea of what makes a good teacher. It isn’t flawless lesson plans or grand gestures. More often, it’s kindness, encouragement, and awakening a spark in students — one that may quietly grow into something more.

Now Lake Delton Elementary is closing, and it feels strange to walk these halls knowing they will soon stand empty.

But I think the inspirational Christy would agree that a school is much more than a building. It is the thousands of stories carried outward by the students, teachers, and staff who once passed through its doors and into the wider world.