Nice to meet you, now tell me what's wrong!

A statement most definately not stated in the world we live in, however, just because it's not said, does not mean there's nothing wrong. I've heard many many times in Young Womens, "you never know what someone is going through, so you always need to treat them with respect." And I always thought, "oh, i'm good at that....I'm not quick to judge, or be mean just because." With that in mind, it never occured to me that one of my own teachers could be going through a very hard time in her life, and what I was doing, and how I was acting, was only contributing to the stress she had building up on her back.
My third period, Journalism, can be a very enjoyable class. It's of about 7 girls, and all we do is write articles and play on indesign for the school newspaper. But lets face it. Girls talk. A LOT. and every time we'd start to get loud, my teacher would yell at us for not being quiet. Yes, I know. Every teacher does that. So that was understandable. Sometimes she'd be mad at us for a really little reason, and we were always thinking, gosh! why is she being so mean to us? we didn't do anything!! She would always tell us she was in a bad mood because of the stress she had, and that things weren't getting any easier with the economy, but the other students and I hadn't stopped to think what she could really be going through.
Today, we were all sitting there, having a nice chat about what we were doing this weekend, and after a date was mentioned with a certain person, My teacher said, "he's a good kid. I wish there were older men like him." Having just recently looked at a family picture she had on her desk of her with her husband and kids, I jokingly said, "what, you don't like your husband?" And that's where it all began. She told us how she and her husband were separated and that a divorce was on the way, and that she's been practically raising her kids on her own for 6 years, and that she's given up her prep period to teach another class to earn more money because her husband refuses to help out, and with the economy highly affecting our school, she had the worry of possibly not having a job at all next year. She had to leave the room because talking about it made her cry, and all of the girls in my class looked at each other, because we all knew what we had done. It wasn't our fault she's going through the divorce and having a hard time, but we all knew that we needed to shape up. We saw the teacher that we had loathed for the whole quarter trying to cope with her HUGE problems! She tries so hard at her job, and to raise her kids, the least we could do was cut her some slack and actually respect her as a teacher. I felt so bad, I wanted to cry because I knew that I had been a brat. While we continued to work on the newspaper, Ashley, a girl in my class, and I decided that we all had to shape up. She deserved an awesome class who did 110% on everything that we did. And even though we can't erase what is happening in her life, we can make a little bit of it a little better.
I can now say, I've learned the lesson that I've had in young womens many times. You never know when someone you interact with is having a hard time in their life, especially if they hide it as well as my teacher did. They may seem like the devil to you, but when you see them cry because of a hardship, the only thing you want to do is give them a hug and apologize, even though what is going on isn't your fault. I know I shouldn't have waited to find out about her hardship to start respecting her, and I feel terrible about it. But I can promise her, that this coming newspaper is going to be the BEST one Blue Ridge has ever seen!