CHARLOTTE -- On the first day of school this year, Sharon Anderson asked her ninth-grade students at Midwood High School what they would do if they had 10 years to live. She allowed them a few minutes to buzz about their dreams before telling them hers: She hopes she's still alive and teaching.
Diagnosed with terminal breast cancer, Anderson doesn't know how long she'll live, but she knows her life will be short. What's important, she said, is that it remains full until her doctor can no longer manage her disease.
Bridget Harris, 16, cries while trying to understand. "When she does die, no matter when it is, I will carry on everything she has given me," Harris said.
Anderson's students see her as passionate and kind - a no-nonsense teacher who actually loves a little nonsense now and then. She gives extra credit for crazy stuff like knowing her favorite songs. But she's a stickler for organization and takes no excuses.
She approaches her work the way she fights her cancer - with a positive attitude that inspires those around her, said her doctor, Stephen Lemantani. "She does not allow this disease to manage her," he said.
Anderson, 40, treats her students like family, rather than another batch of kids who will be gone in a year. She buys them supplies and takes their personal calls. More than that, she gives them hope.
"When I come in here, it's the one place I can be comfortable," Bridget said. "Even when she's hard on me, I know she really cares."
A lot of other teachers just stand in front of the classroom and hope you get it, she said, but "Mrs. Anderson speaks from the heart."
Life surprises
Sharon Anderson was born in Columbia, S.C, where she grew up confident, sassy and bold. She participated in pageants, cheerleading and theater - her true love, which she eventually left to become a teacher.
She met her husband, Brian, at Hampton University in Virginia. They settled in his native New York after graduation and were jolted by her first breast cancer diagnosis in 2001. "I remember thinking, 'God, we have not even turned 40,'" Brian Anderson said.
Sharon Anderson had a lumpectomy and some lymph nodes removed and then swiftly shifted her life back to normal after chemotherapy, without even losing her curly black hair.
The couple moved to North Carolina in 2003 with hopes of starting a family. But on Super Bowl Sunday in 2007, Anderson felt really sick. Her vision was blurring. Her sister, Tracy, took her to the emergency room, where a young doctor looked at her and said her cancer couldn't have come back.
But scans showed spots in the tissue near her breastbone, and a biopsy on a bump on her head revealed a bony cancerous mass pressing on her sinus cavity. The doctor, almost in tears, hugged Anderson, she recalled. "He kept apologizing," she said. "I ended up consoling him."
Anderson's cancer had developed into an incurable stage by spreading to her bones.
She had both breasts removed and several facial surgeries. This time chemotherapy sent her body into early menopause: She could never have a baby. She recalls thinking, "Who will rejoice and carry on my life?"
Losing the chance to be a mother "is a pain I can't explain to you. And I'm still dealing with it. It is the saddest part to me in all of this, even when I think of dying."
Anderson and her husband, who is an HIV counselor and social worker, have had the hard talks about dying. They've discussed what he should do with the house, whether he would move or maybe someday remarry. But mostly they are trying to live normally through each precious day.
"I remember that our religious faith is important," Brian Anderson said. "If we believe half of what we're supposed to believe, then dying is not the end. That's how I'm able to cope."
Her children
Most days, Sharon Anderson feels as if she has a severe case of the flu. The capped-off tubes that she uses in her ongoing chemotherapy treatments dangle from her left arm. Her right arm is protected with a tight, dark sheath used to reduce swelling from other cancer complications. She has lost some hearing and vision, and her sinuses are a mess. Yet she rolls into school full of sass, wearing fun earrings, and on this day prepared with a lesson about the eight parts of speech.
At times, Anderson's second-block English class has a bit of a church feel. She speaks in the cadences of a minister, making forceful declarations about adverbs, nouns and conjunctions from her wooden lectern decorated with a pink ribbon banner.
She closes her eyes and raises her arms when quizzing her kids about the day's lesson. She points at and cheers for those who answer correctly, sometimes calling them "Pooky" and "Boo" and making them giggle.
Midwood High is a ninth-grade transitional school designed to build character. The students in Anderson's class largely are children who weren't able to meet their end-of-grade test score goals and got held back. Home life is tough for many. But Anderson keeps her expectations high.
The students say she knows a lot about them - their family histories, their excuses, their struggles. She's like a mother.
"It's like I got love for Mrs. Anderson, and I never thought I could love someone so fast," said 15-year-old Lechon Hughes. "We are all like family in here."
"You can teach one person, and another person can teach you. It's a big bond that we all know won't be found anywhere else."
Javell Evans, 15, feels it, too. "Even if she dies, or when she dies," he said, "I will always live my life never wanting to let her down."
Anderson knows she has reached her students, but she doesn't let up during class, even when the students are struggling.
"When I (flunk) you, you will have no excuse to give your mother," she told them on a recent Monday. Yet when she saw that some students were confused by part of the lesson, her softer side came out. Let's try again, she said.
"I want you to stay with me," she said. "You're lookin' at me like, 'Why you telling me this?' and I'm about to teach you. Stay with me, just for a few more minutes."
