This past week, Ellen DeGeneres, the famed talk show host who spends her days chatting with celebs and brightening up the days of folks far and wide, interviewed a very special group of Kansas teachers. Of course, all teachers are special in our book, but it’s not often that you come across a set of teaching colleagues who just so happen to be expecting at the exact same time…
The seven educators, who teach at Oak Street Elementary in Goddard, Kansas make up just under half of the entire teaching staff at the school. Just like several groups of nursing colleagues that we have profiled recently, the teachers all became pregnant right around the same time.
Ellen found about these small-town teachers when the following photo went viral last month after the elementary school posted it to its Facebook page:
As you can see, at the time this photo was taken, a couple of the pregnant teachers looked like they could give birth at any moment–and as it turns out, two of them did shortly after the snapshot was posted. Tara and Katie, the soon-to-be mommas pictured on the far left-hand side of the picture ended up giving birth just 24 hours apart, at exactly the same hospital, just two doors down from one another!
Ellen was just as touched by this story as the rest of the nation, so she decided to surprise the group over video chat. Amazingly, the ladies didn’t know who they would be speaking to when they sat down for the interview, so when Ellen’s famous face popped up on the monitor, they reacted pretty much how anyone else would react–they totally freaked out!
In fact, a couple of these teachers were freaking out SO much, that Ellen was concerned that the pregnant ones might go into labor from sheer excitement. Luckily, they all held it together pretty well, even after the talk show host gave the group the surprise of a lifetime.
After a quick interview that featured some of the trials and tribulations of the pregnancies, most notably Nicole’s, who revealed that she had a devastating past 18 months. Sadly, the teacher had lost both her mother to cancer and her baby boy to a premature birth. The time had been a difficult one, to say the least, but she revealed to Ellen that her show was one of the only things that could get her to smile during those dark days.
The talk show host was moved by the teachers’ words, so she decided to pay it forward in a really, REALLY amazing way. Do you have any guesses??
To find out what Ellen DeGeneres did for this amazing group of Kansas teachers, be sure to watch the video below. Spoiler alert: this isn’t the last time we’ll be seeing them on the show!
We’d love to hear your take on this story! Are you impressed with Ellen’s gesture? Has your workplace experienced something similar? If so, how many people were pregnant at the same time?