Old School Teacher Comes Home on Christmas Eve and Notices Footprints Leading to Her Open Door — Story of the Day

Old teacher returns home on Christmas Eve and is frightened to see that her door is open and someone’s footsteps are leading to it.

Amanda Chandler loves her job as an educator. It allows her to spend time with children she believed were the salt of the earth. Her dream to teach had blossomed within her as a young girl, and her supportive parents had done their best to put her on that path.

After getting a college degree in education, Amanda was able to land a job at a local school not far from where she grew up, and there she remained for years, imparting knowledge on different sets of kids who passed through her class.

Amanda was very kind and took her job very seriously; if one of her students was lagging behind, she would take the time to put him or her through so his grades would not suffer.

Her teaching job gave her fulfillment and eventually a husband. The man she married, Todd Chandler, was also an educator, and they had met when she took her students to visit a museum.

He had coincidentally taken his students to that same museum that day, and they had bonded over the chaos of overseeing their students.

Together they had a son named Jack, but twenty years later, Todd passed away from cancer, and Amanda was left to cater to their son, who was in college.

The boy was always away from home and only rarely visited or called to check up on her. In fact, the only time he seemed to remember her existence was when he needed some money.

That year was no different; Amanda had only heard from her son twice in the whole year, and Christmas was fast approaching. Before the holidays, Amanda’s school got involved in a math contest, and she was tasked with preparing her best students for it.

One day, she was in the middle of a math drill with her most brilliant student, Joan, when her son called her. “Hello mom, could you send me some money?” he asked with a whine.

“Why is that the first thing to come out of your mouth after the dry spell of not speaking to me?” she asked him, annoyed and hurt — unaware her students had their eyes on her, listening.

“What do you mean Mom? There simply isn’t anything to talk about,” he replied.

“Really Jack, that’s what you think?” She said with a shaky voice.

“Mom, can I have some money or not?” he asked.