Lessons I Carry With Me From My Time as a Teacher

When I taught in Houston’s East End and Acres Homes, my students carried way more than backpacks into the classroom. Some carried the stress of poverty, living in unsafe communities or unsafe homes where there was physical violence, or the need to work long hours after school was over to help their family make ends meet. Others carried the weight of learning disabilities, feeling “different” or “unlovable”, or physical or mental illness. But they showed up every day, and we figured it out together.

My kids were smart, funny, and tough. They dreamed big. They wanted more for themselves. But if I’m honest, I know now that some of them could have been living through exploitation or even trafficking, and I wouldn’t have known it. Not because I didn’t care. I cared so much it kept me up at night. But being a teacher means juggling a million demands — lesson plans, grading, testing, behavior, meetings, and parent calls. The list never ends. In all that chaos, it’s easy to miss the quiet signs that there might be a deeper problem. Add to that the fact that trafficking doesn’t always look the way people think it does. Kids don’t always talk about it, and sometimes they don’t even realize what’s happening to them is exploitation.

For me, teaching was never just about math problems or essays.

It was about noticing when the kid who usually laughed through class suddenly shut down, or when a student who never missed a day was gone for a week. It was about remembering that kids bring their whole lives into school with them, and those lives shape everything about how they learn, how they act, and who they’re becoming.

In both the East End and Acres Homes, I saw how poverty shaped so much of my students’ daily reality. It made them more vulnerable to instability, stress, and yes, to people who might want to take advantage of them.

These days, I work in child trafficking and exploitation prevention. That’s just a fancy way of saying I try to give kids tools to recognize when something isn’t right, to set boundaries, and to know who they can turn to for help. And it’s not just about kids; it’s also about helping the adults around these youth see the risks and know how to step in with care.

Because the truth is that traffickers go after the same things I saw in my classroom: kids who want to belong, who want stability, who just want someone to really listen to them. Prevention, at its core, is about healthy relationships. And teachers? We get that.

Trafficking and exploitation don’t just happen “somewhere else.” They happen everywhere — big cities, small towns, and suburbs. That’s why prevention can’t just be left to schools or nonprofits. It’s something we can all do. (See ways to get involved.)

I think about my students in Houston all the time.

The ones who made me laugh, the ones who tested me daily, the ones I still worry about. I hope they’re doing well, and I hope the work I do now makes it a little easier for the next teacher, the next parent, the next neighbor to notice what I might have missed back then. It’s not about living in fear. It’s about building communities where every child feels safe enough to grow and thrive.

Sarah Mouser
Prevention Program Manager
Love146