Taking note of a teacher’s praise
Yuma educator attends ex-student’s graduation from Harvard
The Yuma teacher at the center of the feel-good story that went viral over Memorial Day weekend is still in awe of her trip to Boston last week to watch a former student get a Harvard doctorate, but she insists she isn’t the star.
“This is really Christin’s journey, this is her story, and that can’t be undervalued,” said Judy Toensing, a social studies teacher at Fourth Avenue Junior High School. “That has to be at the forefront of this. It is her journey, and it is truly amazing.”
Christin Gilmer, 33, graduated with a doctorate in public health from Harvard last Wednesday, after a journey that took her through Roosevelt, O.C. Johnson, and Rolle elementary schools, Kofa and Gila Ridge high schools, Northern Arizona University, grad school at Columbia and
Harvard, and to South Africa, India, Tanzania, Denmark and several other nations on four continents.
She’s focused on public health programs and research on HIV/AIDS and other communicable diseases across the world, and she’s also worked with Arizona groups including Big Brothers Big Sisters and Sonoran Health Alliance.
Through it all, she kept a sixth-grade report card with a note from a clearly impressed Toensing that ended: “Invite me to your Harvard graduation.”
A post she wrote in April thanking those who had helped her get to this point mentioned Toensing and this report card, which led to Harvard flying Gilmer to Yuma to invite Toensing on an all expense-paid trip to see the commencement for herself.
News outlets around the country picked up the story, and a CNN report featuring video of the teacher being recognized in her classroom has been watched at least 4 million times in the last four days.
Gilmer said Tuesday, “I kept Ms. Toensing’s note all these years because it is a testament to her belief in me and her devotion to all the students she has had over the years. To me, it is a representation of the incredible support and sacrifices all teachers in Yuma make to their students.
“It is that care and effort that makes Yuma such a unique community, and our teachers some of the best in the world,” she said.
Her year in Toensing’s class at O.C. Johnson was her first exposure to global problems, which quickly became her passions, she said.
“Ms. Toensing first exposed me to topics like famine, extreme poverty, and HIV/AIDS when I was 12 years old, showing me that through education and political activism, I can help prevent some of this suffering in a small way.
“I realized through her words (with some eloquent writings of Bono and Nelson Mandela to boot) that this type of human suffering was preventable and completely unnecessary, not to mention a total injustice for our sisters and brothers around the globe and even in my own backyard,” she said.
Toensing said she had been following Gilmer’s achievements through Facebook, though they only communicated maybe once or twice a year. Seeing posts of the young woman working to improve conditions in sub-Saharan Africa or India, or speaking at a conference, she would say, “Wow, you were there,” she said.
So when Glimer showed up in her classroom with her mother LB Gilmer, a retired longtime teacher and principal from Yuma District One who now lives in Tacoma, Wash., to pop the question, she didn’t hesitate.
“I said absolutely I would. I mean what I say. And if I say I wanna be at Harvard, I meant, I wanna be at Harvard,” she said. She doesn’t remember writing that particular note for Christin Gilmer, but she isn’t surprised that she did.
Her four-day trip to Boston last week for the graduation was a whirlwind of meetings and greetings with Harvard leaders during events where Gilmer, who graduated with honors and was also student body president, was honored. Toensing became a minor celebrity of her own as news about why she was there had begun to spread.
She also got to hear Harvard public health dean Dr. Michelle Williams tell Gilmer’s story again during the graduation: “It’s truly been a Cinderella story, let me tell you.”
She estimates her career has put her in touch with about 5,000 students, and watching one of them graduate years later isn’t a new thing for her.
“I have been invited to I don’t know how many high school graduations in Yuma, because I’ve been teaching in Yuma for 37 years, since 1981. And I go to each and every one of them, because that’s a proud moment.” she said.
Hundreds of former students have contacted her through Facebook in the few days since the CNN story first aired, and many others have contacted other local teachers who have passed their greetings on to Toensing.
“Oh my gosh, my heart is full. It’s overwhelming, truly overwhelming. I’ve truly been blessed,” she said.
But she said has gone viral because so many other people can identify with it, she added.
“It’s Christin’s journey, her story, and everyone can identify with a piece of what she’s gone through, and take it to heart, and feel good about themselves, and know that by working and having tenacity and having passion for what you do, that things work out. Who doesn’t need to hear those stories nowadays?”
Gilmer said she is currently volunteer health director for the Special Olympics USA Games, being held this July in Seattle, and has been talking to global health agencies and nonprofits about future employment opportunities, “but I would eventually love to return to Southern Arizona, so I can give back to the communities that were so pivotal in shaping my life and who I am.”
She said her visit to Toensing’s classroom was the first time she’d been back in Yuma in about 10 years, but she’s never stopped appreciating her hometown and how it shaped her.
“Getting to represent Yuma and talking about how proud I was to be from Arizona was a big highlight of my academic career. Yuma has some truly amazing people, and humbly getting to represent them in some small ways at places like that has been a really touching, powerful reminder of all the people in my hometown who have supported me, taught me, believed in me, and befriended me over the years,” she said.