Chicago Teacher Proves One Small Act of Kindness Can Change a Child’s Whole Future

Kindness has a way of finding people at exactly the right moment. And the acts of compassion that tend to stay with us the longest are the quiet ones. The ones that we never see coming. LaShonda Carter is the kind of person who believes a teacher’s job goes beyond the classroom. And what she did for a struggling old student in Chicago is the kind of story that reminds us why human connection is the most powerful force there is.

LaShonda Carter had been a teacher at Englewood High School in Chicago for years. She taught social studies and science. Larresha Plummer had been one of her most challenging students.

“In the beginning it was tumultuous,” Carter told Good Morning America. “But we became very close because I saw her heart and not what she was pretending to be.” That connection, although forged in a classroom where the two of them once clashed, later turned out to be the most important relationship in Larresha’s life.

Three years after graduating from Englewood High, Larresha reached out to her old teacher Carter on Facebook late at night. She was 18 and had a 1-month-old daughter. Taliyah. No one to support her. She was trying to find part-time work to support her child. There was a job fair she needed to attend.

But getting there meant taking her newborn on a bus, through interviews, through an entire day of networking with a baby in her arms. She didn’t know how to make it work. She didn’t have enough money for the bus.

She messaged Carter, not expecting much. Just told her about everything going on in her life. And that she’s going to be a freshman but needed to find work. She shared that she needed someone to babysit her daughter while she goes to the job fair and some money.

Carter didn’t hesitate for a second. “I told her, ‘You are only three weeks out of the hospital. I’m going to come and get you, and we’re going to go from there.’”

The next day, Carter drove to Larresha’s home. Picked up the young mother and her newborn daughter and drove them to the job fair. She sat in the car with Taliyah for hours while Larresha went inside to hand out resumes and meet employers.

“There was no way I would have let her take a baby in a bus,” Carter said.

While she waited, Carter went on Facebook Live to ask her community for help. She told her followers about Larresha and asked if anyone could donate diapers or clothing for the baby. “Sometimes as a teacher, our job goes beyond the classroom,” she said in the video.

The response was overwhelming. Donations came in from across Chicago. Larresha received diapers, baby clothes, and even multiple job offers. She accepted a part-time retail position and started work that fall. She was also enrolled to begin at Kennedy-King College as a freshman.

Carter didn’t do it for the praise. “I’m no more special than any other teacher,” she said. “Teachers do things like this every day. We don’t need recognition.”

But for Larresha, the act of kindness meant everything. It was the moment she realized she wasn’t alone. “She had canceled all her plans just to get me there,” Larresha said. “I call her mama. I call her my second mom.” She added, “I actually didn’t have nobody before I met Miss Carter. Now it’s better that I got somebody, because it’s like I really have somebody in my corner.”